Arvind's Newsletter

1.The tech job shift: How Hyderabad is catching up to Bengaluru: Mint

Global tech firms are expanding senior teams in Hyderabad, narrowing Bengaluru’s lead in India’s high-value tech jobs. The shift is being driven by Hyderabad’s favourable lifestyle and lower traffic, along with supportive policy frameworks.

Hyderabad, long seen as a back-office base, is now luring high-value jobs in data engineering, artificial intelligence (AI) and research and development (R&D)—fields that have traditionally clustered in Bengaluru. Staffing executives say companies are shifting more senior-level roles to Hyderabad, pushing up its median salaries at a faster clip than in Bengaluru.

Data underscores the shift. Staffing firm TeamLease said median pay for software product engineering roles has risen 8.6% this year to ₹30.4 lakh in Hyderabad, outpacing Bengaluru’s 5.6% increase to ₹33.8 lakh. For engineering, research and development roles, salaries have jumped 11.1% to ₹20 lakh in Hyderabad, versus a 6.5% rise to ₹24.5 lakh in Bengaluru.

Executives attribute this divergence not to higher raise percentages but to an influx of senior hires in Hyderabad, which lifted overall medians.

2.US firms lead India’s GCC surge, set to establish nearly 350 new centres by 2030: Moneycontrol

American multinationals continue to anchor India’s booming Global Capability Centre (GCC) landscape, poised to account for approximately 300-350 of the 500 new centres expected by 2030, according to data from ANSR and UnearthInsight.

The initial wave of GCC growth was dominated by financial services and tech giants. The next phase, however, is marked by mid-market enterprise software companies broadening their India footprint. Alongside the US, firms from the UK, Western Europe, Japan and Australia are steadily ramping up investments.

Currently, US companies operate around 60 per cent of the more than 1,700 existing GCCs in India. Recent entrants include McDonald’s, American Airlines, Meltwater, Netsmart, Rapid7, Jaggaer, eBay, Eli Lilly and Vanguard.

3.Naveen Jindal makes an offer to buy the steel business of Germany's Thyssenkrupp: Mint and Reuters

Naveen Jindal-led Jindal Steel International has made an offer to acquire the European steel assets of German industrial engineering and steel production major Thyssenkrupp AG, the company said in a statement on Tuesday.

Jindal pledged a combination of steelmaking expertise and a clear pathway toward the decarbonization of Germany’s steel industry.

Thyssenkrupp said it would closely examine the offer for Thyssenkrupp Steel Europe (TKSE) "particularly with regard to economic sustainability, the continuation of the green transformation and employment at our steel sites".

4.India's Aditya Birla Fashion launches value retail brand OWND!, takes on Trent's Zudio: Reuters

Indian retailer Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail launched affordable fashion brand "OWND!" on Tuesday, aimed at capturing Gen Z shoppers in a move that pitches it against Trent's fast-growing budget apparel chain Zudio.

The brands focus on young adults who regularly shop for trendy yet affordable styles.

The push pits Aditya Birla Fashion's "OWND!" brand directly against Zudio, which has yielded a compounded annual revenue growth rate of more than 35% in the past five years for Trent.

5.A metal-petal: How Navi Mumbai airport mimics a lotus, carries a legacy: Business Standard

Rising from reclaimed wetlands at the edge of India’s financial capital, a lotus of metal and glass is taking shape — set to extend the Mumbai Metropolitan Region’s reach to the world.

Expected to open this year, the Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA) will greet passengers under a petal-shaped roof with flowing contours, echoing the design spirit of its twin aerodrome in Mumbai. 

The airport will feature a central atrium resembling a pond where lotuses bloom,  with concourses radiating outward like unfurling petals. 

Its glass façades and latticework mimic lotus leaves. Perforated screens — colloquially referred to as jaalis — allow natural light to drift through the terminal roof, softening its touch as it brushes the floors below. 

6.Beijing has said the US spin-off of TikTok to be sold to American investors in a deal orchestrated by President Donald Trump will include licensing of ByteDance’s algorithm: Financial Times and others

Wang Jingtao, deputy head of China’s powerful cyber security regulator, told reporters on Monday night that US and Chinese officials had agreed a framework that included “licensing the algorithm and other intellectual property rights”.

He said ByteDance would “entrust the operation of TikTok’s US user data and content security”, without elaborating.

TikTok’s powerful recommendation algorithm has been at the heart of a geopolitical tug of war over the short-video app since the first Trump administration, when Beijing unveiled export controls on algorithms to thwart a forced sale of the app.

The AI algorithm underpins the app’s prized ability to serve up addictive videos tailored to individual users, but has also raised fears among national security hawks that it could be manipulated to push Chinese propaganda or polarising material to users.

It remains unclear to what extent TikTok’s Chinese parent would retain control of the algorithm in the US as part of a licensing deal.

An Asia-based investor of ByteDance said the new US TikTok entity would use at least part of the Chinese algorithm but train it in the US on American user data. “Beijing’s bottom line is a licensing deal,” said the investor. “Beijing wants to be seen as exporting Chinese technology to the US and the world.”

“It’s the ultimate Taco trade,” said one US adviser close to the deal, referring to the acronym “Trump always chickens out”. “After all this, China keeps the algorithm.”

7.Google just joined the $3 trillion market cap club: Bloomberg and others

Alphabet joins a short list of companies valued at more than $3 trillion, with Nvidia Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Apple Inc. the only other publicly traded stocks above that level.

The stock’s most recent leg higher was fueled by a long-awaited antitrust ruling that avoided the most punitive measures sought by regulators, including the sale of Alphabet’s Chrome browser. The ruling came in the wake of Alphabet’s second-quarter earnings, which showed that demand for artificial intelligence products is lifting sales.

Google’s move to $3 trillion also comes as Google Cloud is finally throwing its weight around. In July, Alphabet reported that cloud revenue leapt nearly 32% year over year to $13.6 billion, with adoption of its in-house Tensor Processing Units and Gemini AI models driving growth, putting Google on pace to generate more than $50 billion annually if growth holds.

The company also signaled it would spend more aggressively to meet data-center demand, boosting its 2025 capital expenditures plan by $10 billion to $85 billion. For a market skeptical about whether Google could turn AI into more than a defensive play, that was evidence that the company could potentially grow a second profit engine alongside its dominant search business.

Google has also created a new privacy-preserving LLM: VaultGemma uses a technique called differential privacy to reduce the amount of data AI holds onto.

8.Analysis of AI Usage Reports of ChatGPT and Claude: Fortune

Leading AI companies OpenAI and Anthropic published separate studies yesterday on how their chatbots—ChatGPT and Claude—are being adopted worldwide.

Users are increasingly using ChatGPT for personal queries, according to OpenAI's analysis of 1.5 million conversations collected over nearly three years. Over 70% of conversations are non-work-related, compared to 53% last year. ChatGPT is also gaining popularity in lower-income countries, with adoption in the lowest-income countries over four times higher than in the highest-income ones. 

Anthropic’s analysis of 1 million conversations from August found the use of Claude highest in high-income countries, where users increasingly use the chatbot to refine work and learn. In contrast, lower-income countries—whose economies are manufacturing-oriented—are more likely to automate tasks with Claude. 

Claude usage trends in the US mirrored state economies, with travel planning popular in Hawaii and IT queries frequent in major tech centers like California.

9.Trump files $15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times: CNN and others

Trump filed a $15 billion defamation and libel lawsuit against The New York Times, accusing the paper of serving as a “mouthpiece” for the Democrats and pitting himself against one of the oldest and most prominent news organizations in the world. The amount he’s seeking exceeds the market capitalization of The New York Times Co., which currently stands at about $9.65 billion.

The suit is the latest example of what First Amendment experts have described as a presidential strategy to silence critical news coverage and curb free speech by filing nuisance lawsuits.

While the Times immediately signaled that it would fight the suit, the Committee to Protect Journalists observed that “these types of defamation suits send a chilling message and can entangle news media in time-consuming and costly legal processes.”

The defamation suit against The Times also names book publisher Penguin Random House and four Times reporters, two of whom wrote a book for Penguin, titled “Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success.”

10.The phenomenon of 'grey divorce':BBC

Divorce in later life is becoming more common – and this can have a surprisingly deep impact on adult children and their relationships.

The US has one of the highest divorce rates in the world, even though over the past four decades, it has fallen among younger couples. Instead, middle-aged and older adults have taken over. In fact, adults aged 65 and older are now the only age group in the US with a growing divorce rate. For the over-50s, the rate also rose for decades, but has now stabilised.  

Today, roughly 36% of people getting divorced are 50 and older, compared to only 8.7% in 1990. This is known as a "grey divorce".

This tilt towards later-in-life divorce is happening for a mix of reasons, studies suggest. Lives are longer than they used to be, for a start, and older couples may be less willing to put up with unfulfilling marriages than before. Meanwhile, young people are getting married later and have become more selective when choosing a partner. As one researcher puts it, "the United States is progressing toward a system in which marriage is rarer and more stable than it was in the past".

The rise in grey divorce isn't exclusive to the US – it's also happening in ageing populations around the world.

Amid this trend, one aspect of grey divorce is beginning to receive more attention: the surprisingly deep and wide-ranging impact the split can have on adult children – and on their relationships with their parents, especially, their fathers. Read on.