Arvind's Newsletter

1.Amid global uncertainties, FDI in India falls 5.6% to $10.9 bn in Q3FY25, however cumulative flow surged 27%

Foreign direct investment (FDI) in India fell 5.6% year-on-year to $10.9 billion in October-December 2024 due to global uncertainties, per government data, Business Standard reported. However, cumulative inflows for April-December 2024-25 surged 27% to $40.67 billion.

Singapore, the US, the Netherlands and the UAE saw higher investments, while Mauritius, Japan, the UK, and Germany declined. Maharashtra led with $16.65 billion, followed by Gujarat and Karnataka. Key sectors attracting FDI were services, software, telecom, and automobiles, with non-conventional energy receiving $3.5 billion.

2.Apple’s India engineers push iPhones closer to hinterlands with local languages

Last month, Apple announced that starting April, its iPhones will support 10 Indian languages. Thanks to the expertise of its Indian teams working with global ones, support for local languages will not just help Apple catch up with what Google’s Android has offered in India for years—it will also help it capture more first-time phone buyers from non-metropolitan markets across the country, experts said.

From next month, iPhones eligible to receive Apple’s iOS 18.4 update will support Bangla, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. These languages would be applicable across every nook and cranny of the iPhone’s software interface, just the way it already supports languages such as French, Latin or Mandarin Chinese.

3.Investments from Indian diaspora in GIFT City funds surpass $7 bn: IFSCA

Investments by the Indian diaspora in GIFT City-based funds have crossed USD 7 billion, a top official from the International Financial Services Centres Authority said on Tuesday.

Dedicated facilities for attracting the diaspora money into the GIFT City in Gujarat were started in 2024.The over 19 million-strong diaspora is a big catchment of funds, and explained the idea behind it.

4.Trump Escalates Global Trade War, Ukraine Aid Paused: Bloomberg

The blows in this trade war are landing hard and fast. President Donald Trump delivered on his threat to hit Canada and Mexico with sweeping import levies and doubled an existing charge on China, spurring swift reprisals. 

The US new tariffs — 25% duties on most Canadian and Mexican imports and raising the charge on China to 20% — impact roughly $1.5 trillion in annual imports. China hit back, imposing tariffs as high as 15% on US agricultural goods and banning exports to some defense companies. Among American goods hit: chicken, cotton, soybeans, beef and fruits. Canada retaliated with phased levies on $107 billion worth of US goods.

In other news, US is suspending military aid to Ukraine as President Donald Trump seeks to increase pressure on President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to make concessions for a peace deal.

Trump’s decision halts what has been a consistent supply of US military assistance and weapons to Kyiv since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago. It comes amid growing tension between Trump and Zelenskyy, as the US president tries to push Ukraine to settle the conflict rapidly with Russia.

5.TSMC unveils $100bn US chip investment

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company on Monday said it would invest $100bn in the US, boosting capacity in the country in a move designed to placate President Donald Trump and head off threatened tariffs on chip imports.

The investment will fund the construction of three new chip-making plants, in addition to an existing facility in Arizona that will begin mass production this year. TSMC will also set up two advanced packaging facilities that are essential for improving chip performance, particularly for artificial intelligence applications.

TSMC also plans to build a research and development centre as part of its overall plan, which it said would be the “largest single foreign direct investment in US history”.

6.Electric vehicles from BYD now come with an inbuilt drone launcher

EV maker BYD unveiled “Lingyuan,” a vehicle-mounted drone launching system developed in collaboration with DJI that is available for all of the company’s vehicles, reports Chinese state media outlet Xinhua. The system is only available in China, like BYD’s vehicles, and costs 16,000 yuan (or about $2,197).

BYD’s video below, reposted by YouTube channel ShanghaiEye, has some real science fiction vibes: the driver taps a button on their vehicle’s touch screen, and doors slide open on the top of the car, revealing a rising landing platform with a drone on it. The drone is shown lifting off while the EV is in motion in some shots, then following the car down the road.

7.Why not get rid of grades? Daniel Pink opines in Washington Post

Grades should come with a warning label.

They’re meant to help — but the side effects? Superficial learning. Outright cheating. Rampant grade inflation.

It’s time to end the madness. Author Daniel Pink in his Washington Post article argue for ditching grades and replacing them with something more rigorous.

“If you’re looking for continued signs of inflation, bypass your local supermarket and head to Harvard Yard. Twenty years ago, the mean grade-point average for Harvard University undergraduates was 3.41. Today, Harvard’s average GPA has ballooned to 3.8. At America’s oldest university, 79 percent of the grades are now A’s and A-minuses ― a 32 percent increase from 1o years earlier.

Down the road in New Haven, Connecticut, grade inflation is equally rampant. In the 2022-2023 academic year, nearly 60 percent of the grades Yale University professors awarded undergraduates were an outright A, not even an A-minus. Only 20 percent of grades in the entire college were a B+ or below.

More important, the letter system ran smack into Goodhart’s Law,an adage named for British economist Charles Goodhart, which holds that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases being a good measure. Grades began as a tool for assessing learning but quickly became the point of the exercise. For many students, the goal of school isn’t to learn. It’s to get an A.

Decades of research, at all levels of education, has demonstrated that grades can promote short-term performance rather than long-term understanding, encourage both superficial studying and outright cheating, and can undermine a student’s intrinsic interest in the material.

Stanford University’s Carol Dweck and other researchers have shown that “performance goals” (earning a high grade) and “learning goals” (mastering material) run on separate tracks. Meeting a performance goal doesn’t necessarily signal that someone has achieved a learning goal.”

So, what’s the alternative?

At Hampshire College and Evergreen State College, professors provide narrative evaluations of student work rather than letter grades. Sarah Lawrence College assigns grades but places greater emphasis on written descriptions of how well students have mastered six critical abilities. Reed College records grades but doesn’t distribute them directly to students (provided they maintain a strong performance), instead promoting intellectual growth through detailed instructor evaluations and conferences. At Brown University, students can elect to take courses for satisfactory/no credit instead of a grade and can request written “course performance reports” on their work.

These reforms undo the current regime’s two main defects. They are measures, not targets. And they prioritize the growth of individuals over the convenience of institutions.”

You can read the column here (gift article)

8.Anthropic’s valuation triples to $61.5bn in bumper AI funding round

Four-year-old artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic has raised $3.5bn in a deal that triples its valuation to more than $60bn, as it aims to keep pace with OpenAI and ahead of newer rivals including China’s DeepSeek.

The investment comes a week after Anthropic launched its “most intelligent” model to date, named Claude 3.7 Sonnet, and will be spent on computing resources to develop new models, as well as international expansion in Asia and Europe.

The funding round, which was several times subscribed, suggests investors remain bullish about the potential for heavily loss-making AI start-ups to continue their rapid growth, despite fears that rivals including DeepSeek are closing the gap with cheaper models and the highly sophisticated technology is quickly becoming commoditised.

The new pre-money valuation is about 58 times its year-end $1 billion in annualised revenue. While that makes Anthropic one of the most highly valued AI startups, the revenue multiple has dropped sharply  from a year ago as revenue has surged.

9.In India, buying a gun is a WhatsApp message away

Researchers found messages advertising guns across 234 publicly accessible WhatsApp groups in India, which violates Meta’s policies prohibiting firearm sales.

The names and descriptions of some groups contain references to gun sales, which can easily be monitored by WhatsApp.

The company has faced similar allegations globally. Earlier studies found instances of firearms-related advertisements on Meta’s platforms in the U.S. and the European Union. 

10.Why record number of Olive Ridleys came to nest in Odisha this year

Nearly seven lakh Olive Ridley turtles laid eggs at the Rushikulya ‘rookery’ or nesting ground in Odisha’s Ganjam district during a mass nesting between February 16 and February 25. The development came after the region did not witness any mass nesting last year. In 2023, around 6.37 lakh Olive Ridleys, an endangered marine species, laid eggs at the same spot.