Arvind's Newsletter

1.Tata Motors, JLR to make EVs in India for the world

Tata Motors and Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) will make electric vehicles (EV) in India for global markets, Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran has said, outlining how the group wants to use the "cost attitude" and sophistication of the brands to hit a "sweet spot".

N Chandrasekaran, chairman of Tata Sons highlighted long-standing synergies between the two brands and revealed plans to produce EVs on JLR's Electrified Modular Architecture (EMA) platform. Two models — one from Tata Motors and one from JLR, likely the Tata Avinya, will be manufactured at Tata’s Sanand plant in Gujarat, including a former Ford facility. JLR’s export plans will be revealed within a year.

Additionally, a Rs 9,000 crore project in Tamil Nadu is set to become another major EV hub for Tata Motors and JLR.

2.At the Big Four, work stress is taking a toll on both employee and employer; Devina Sengupta in Mint

The Big Four global consultancies—KPMG, EY, PwC, and Deloitte—rely heavily on one key asset: manpower. This workforce is also their most expensive, making the business model heavily dependent on utilising their employees to the maximum.

But it has now come at a cost—the recent death of a 26-year-old chartered accountant four months after she joined EY in Pune. Her parents have blamed work stress for her passing.

While EY on Wednesday said it was “deeply saddened" by the employee’s death and that it “will continue to find ways to improve and provide a healthy workplace", senior executives at the Big 4 audit firms acknowledged the demanding work pressure.

While the article talks about work pressure and unsupportive (sometimes toxic) environment leading to stress and mental health issues in big-four consultancies, this not limited to them and true also of strategy consulting firms including Mckinsey, where an associate committed suicide earlier this year and also other professional services firms including law firms. Professional services firms have been slow to respond to these issues.

3.India overtakes China in world’s biggest investable stock benchmark; Financial Times

India has overtaken China’s weighting in one of the world’s biggest stock market benchmarks, as share sales and rising liquidity in Indian companies make the country more open to investors. India’s share of the free-float, “investable”, version of the MSCI All-Country World index, which tracks almost all global stocks that can be bought on the open market, rose to 2.33 per cent this month, eclipsing China’s 2.06 per cent.

The shift makes India the sixth-largest weighting in an index that is dominated by US companies. It also reflects demand in India’s red-hot stock market, which is also unlocking shares for global investors to buy just as the Chinese economy slumps and fund managers dump China-related stocks.

India’s blue-chip Nifty 50 index has hit record highs this year as the country’s economy registers the strongest GDP growth of any major economy and millions of middle-class households pile their savings into local mutual funds. Some $38 bn of domestic money has flowed into Indian equities this year, exceeding the annual level of each of the past 16 years.

4.Over Rs 2 Lakh Crore Unclaimed: India's Growing Asset Transmission Challenges; A report by Moneylife in Wire

Some excerpts from the report:

“Generally, unclaimed assets accrue from dormant bank accounts, maturity proceeds of policies idling in insurance companies, life savings of individuals locked up in bank accounts, equity and bond investments, provident fund accounts, mutual fund investments, post-office savings as well as dividend, interest and other corporate benefits that have not been cashed for years.

They remain in pools such as the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) depositor education and awareness fund (DEAF), which had Rs 78,213 crore at the end of March 2024. The ministry of corporate affairs told Lok Sabha about Rs 5,714 crore in corporate benefits, which did not include the value of shares.”

“Among the challenges that nominees and legal heirs face when claiming assets of the deceased are inconsistent processes for nomination, lack of standard operating procedures, poor searchability of data, lack of knowledge and harassment by officials, which lead to unreasonable delays in settlement of claims.”

Developed countries have a centralised process to ‘reunite unclaimed property with the rightful owner’. It is the opposite in India, where every hurdle is placed in the way of claims.”

5.Israel’s Mossad spy agency planted explosives in the thousands of pagers that blew up across Lebanon on Tuesday, killing at least nine people, according to multiple reports. This was followed by Hizbollah walkie-talkies explode in Lebanon in second day of blasts

A Lebanese security source told Reuters that the pagers were imported by the militant group Hezbollah months earlier, and their detonation was triggered with a code. Hezbollah ordered its members to use pagers due to security concerns around phones, but Israel has a long history of using communication devices for assassination, the Financial Times noted, including killing a Palestinian leader using explosives in his phone’s marble stand in 1972. The operation demonstrated Israel’s ability to infiltrate even its most ardent adversaries, analysts said, but risks an escalating regional conflict.

Handheld walkie-talkies used by Hizbollah were detonated across Lebanon on Wednesday, the militant group said, killing at least three people and injuring more than 100 a day after thousands of pagers exploded in the country.

6.People who exercise have healthier belly fat, new study finds

There are lots of good reasons to exercise that have nothing to do with weight loss. Now, science has found yet another one: It turns out that a regular exercise habit can make your fat tissue healthier. And that, in turn, keeps you healthier.

To find out how exercise impacts fat tissue, researchers at the University of Michigan recruited 32 adults with obesity. Half of them were consistent long-term exercisers. They’d been doing aerobic exercise like jogging or biking regularly at least four times a week — for at least two years. The other half of the study group was composed of non-exercisers, but they were otherwise similar to those in the first group in many ways.

If we live a physically active lifestyle, it’s going to help us store that excess fat in a healthier, safer way.

7.GLP-1 pills are coming, and they could revolutionize weight-loss treatment

Drugs like Ozempic that are being used for weight loss are all the rage these days. But a lot of people don't like the idea of giving themselves an injection.

But the need for needles may soon change. At least a dozen similar experimental weight-loss drugs designed to be taken as pills are working their way through clinical trials, with the most advanced now in the third and final stage of testing.

They’re likely to “drastically change the landscape for weight management in several ways,” said Dr. Jody Dushay, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and an attending physician in endocrinology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, who prescribes weight-loss medications.

8.Leonardo Da Vinci Was A Master Perfumer, But Practically Nobody Knows About It
A new exhibition in Amboise, France, is finally bringing his most overlooked pursuit to the fore.

We shouldn’t be surprised that a polymath like da Vinci would dabble in niche pursuits – after all, the guy was studying geology centuries before anyone else in Europe thought to look at rocks for insights. But in fact, creating and studying perfume would probably not have been seen as all that weird at the time.

“During the Renaissance, the time during which da Vinci lived, perfume and smell were an essential part of daily life,” explains Dr Caro Verbeek, a scent and art historian working at Kunstmuseum Den Haag and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.