Arvind's Newsletter

1.Cash-rich private sector promoters: Tata Sons continues to dominate in FY24

Tata Sons continued to dominate as the country’s most cash-rich private-sector promoter in 2023-24, maintaining a significant lead over its peers.

In FY24, the Tata group holding company earned about Rs 36,500 crore from dividends and share buybacks, a 7.5 per cent increase from Rs 27,800 crore in FY23. Azim Premji of Wipro followed with earnings of nearly Rs 9,100 crore through dividends and share buybacks in FY24 — nearly 23 times the 400 crore mopup in the previous year. The Shiv Nadar family of HCL Technologies stood third, amassing close to Rs 8,600 crore in 2023-24.

Other prominent promoters in the top 10 included Anil Agarwal of Vedanta (Rs 6,800 crore), Infosys promoters (Rs 3,745 crore), Mukesh Ambani (Rs 3,322 crore), the Rahul Bajaj family (Rs 1,911 crore), the Hindujas (Rs 1,800 crore), Dilip Shanghvi of Sun Pharma (Rs 1,765 crore), and the promoters of Asian Paints (Rs 1,681 crore).

2.Fewer iPhones, bigger bucks: Apple outsells Samsung in India revenue

Apple has widened its lead over Samsung in India’s mobile phone market, even though it ships less than half the number of devices compared to its South Korean rival. The US tech giant achieved this feat through record-high average selling prices (ASPs) and strategic market expansion, reported The Economic Times, citing research from IDC.  

In the first half of 2024, Apple shipped 4.8 million iPhones in India, generating $4.56 billion in revenue. In contrast, Samsung shipped nearly double the volume at 9.8 million units but earned $3.43 billion, trailing Apple by $1.13 billion in revenue. This marks a significant widening of the revenue gap compared to 2023 when Apple surpassed Samsung's mobile phone value share in India for the first time, with a lead of just $362 million.

3.Electric vehicle maker JSW MG Motor India is venturing into the luxury segment. 

JSW MG Motor India, a joint venture between India's JSW Group and China’s SAIC Motor, announced plans to launch a high-end automobile brand named ‘MG Select’. The brand is expected to roll out its first luxury vehicles in the first quarter of 2025, with four models slated for release over the next two years.

 JSW MG Motor India highlighted that this initiative is part of its strategic efforts to tap into the expanding premium car segment in the Indian market.

4.Why OpenAI’s new model is such a big deal

Last week OpenAI released a new model called o1 (previously referred to under the code name “Strawberry” and, before that, Q*) that blows GPT-4o out of the water.

Unlike previous models that are well suited for language tasks like writing and editing, OpenAI o1 is focused on multistep “reasoning,” the type of process required for advanced mathematics, coding, or other STEM-based questions. The model is also trained to answer PhD-level questions in subjects ranging from astrophysics to organic chemistry.

The bulk of LLM progress until now has been language-driven, but in addition to getting lots of facts wrong, such LLMs have failed to demonstrate the types of skills required to solve important problems in fields like drug discovery, materials science, coding, or physics. 

OpenAI’s o1 is one of the first signs that LLMs might soon become genuinely helpful companions to human researchers in these fields. Read the full story 

Meanwhile , OpenAI is apparently raising more funding at a $150 bn valuation. 

5.Breast milk’s benefits are not limited to babies

Its antimicrobial properties could help to treat cancer and other conditions.

The exact composition of breast milk remains slightly mysterious. After water, its most abundant components are lactose; fatty compounds known as lipids; and sugar molecules called human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs). But it also contains a host of proteins, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, hormones and live cells from the mother’s body. Its richness continues to surprise: in 2009, for example, more than 250 previously unknown proteins were identified within it; in 2015 it yielded up 300 new microRNA molecules, which regulate gene expression throughout the body. “There is lots of room for discovery”, says Meghan Azad at the University of Manitoba, in Canada.

6.How Netflix won the streaming wars; Christopher Grimes in Financial Times

Since launching its password crackdown in May 2023, Netflix has added 45mn paying subscribers. Its share price has risen more than 300 per cent from its post-correction low, recently setting new all-time highs.

Such a rebound was hardly assured in 2022. But since then, Netflix has launched an ads business from scratch, invested in its nascent video games division and expanded its live “experiences” around popular shows such as Bridgerton, Squid Game and Stranger Things. It has even started dipping into live sport.

While Netflix regained much of its swagger, the traditional Hollywood groups have been mired in a funk. The Netflix correction marked the end of investor patience for streaming losses, and Disney is the only one of the legacy entertainment groups currently making any money in that business after turning profitable this summer.

The movie industry is weathering another difficult year, prompting concerns about whether the box office will ever sell as many tickets as it did before the pandemic. Cable television — once a prodigious cash flow generator — is in a deep decline, and many doubt that streaming will ever replace its moneymaking power.

For all the gripes about programming quality, Netflix still came out of last weekend’s Emmy awards with 24 winners, including four for Baby Reindeer — though it was beaten into second place overall by Disney’s production unit FX, creator of hit series such as Shogun and The Bear.

7.Flooding devastated swaths of West and Central Africa as well as Central and Eastern Europe.

Millions of people across seven African countries have been displaced, while around 40% of one major Nigerian city was submerged, with the United Nations warning of further heavy rainfall and flooding due in the region in the coming months.

And in Europe, the mayor of one Polish town called for residents to evacuate as flooding struck his country, along with Austria, the Czech Republic, and Romania, while Hungary expects to be hit, too. On both continents, the flooding was linked to climate change: Warmer weather leads to more intense rainfall, and higher ocean temperatures result in greater evaporation that then drives storms, the BBC noted.

8.FT and Schroders Business Book of the Year 2024 — the shortlist

The pursuit of better growth, the purpose of technology, the economy of tribal instincts and improving longevity are among the topics tackled by the six finalists for the 20th Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award.

The finalists are:

The Corporation in the Twenty-First Century: Why (almost) everything we are told about business is wrong, by John Kay, traces the impact on the corporation of the shareholder value movement, the knowledge economy and the digital and services revolution, which is changing the way companies are run.

Tribal: How the Cultural Instincts That Divide Us Can Help Bring Us Together, by Michael Morris, set to be published next month, is a vivid examination of the power of tribalism, often used to ill effect, but latent with potential for positive change if leaders in business and politics can harness basic human instincts.

Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race That Will Change the World, by Parmy Olson, tracks the rivalry between Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind and Sam Altman of OpenAI, as they sought to apply artificial intelligence to change the world for the better, while while Google, Microsoft and others vied for commercial purposes.

The Longevity Imperative: Building a Better Society for Healthier, Longer Lives, by Andrew Scott, proposes ways in which people, policymakers and businesses can establish an “evergreen agenda” to help us make the most of our longer lives.

Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley Are Transforming the Future of War, by Raj Shah and Christopher Kirchhoff, takes the reader inside the technology revolution that is shaking up the way the US military is supplied and how modern warfare is waged.

Growth: A Reckoning, by Daniel Susskind, examines the tension between our breakneck quest for growth, which can widen inequality and destroy the environment, and the need to preserve what we value.

9.Also the Booker prize shortlist was announced at the same time and Five of the six authors on the shortlist were women, a record. With three of the books at least partly set in the past, the shortlist also exhibited a growing trend toward historical fiction.

Twelve out of the last 15 fiction Pulitzer winners were historical, as were 70% of US National Book Award nominations since 2000. Between 1950 and 1980, by comparison, about half of the nominated books were set in the present.

 That may be because of the growing diversity of authors, Alexander Manshel argued in The Nation: Writers of colour are often prized for “narratives of war, immigration, colonialism, and enslavement that span generations,” incentivising those writers “only a single sector in the literary field.”