Arvind’s Newsletter

1.Ola Electric heads for two-wheeler IPO in India’s first EV listing, reports Financial Times

Bhavish Aggarwal sees a public listing of his electric scooter business early this year as reflecting the significant contribution his colourful bikes have been making to India’s nascent EV market.

“Some companies need to be in the public domain given the scale of impact they have on society,” he said in a Financial Times interview ahead of an initial public offering by Ola Electric that is expected to be among the largest Indian IPOs of the past two years.

However, the hard-charging mobility entrepreneur is facing the challenges of tepid market interest in start-ups, high staff turnover, increased competition from established manufacturers, and a loss of government subsidies that is expected to make electric scooters less attractive to consumers.

Aggarwal co-founded the ride-hailing app Ola Cabs over a decade ago, before adding to his mobility empire by creating Ola Electric, and most recently expanding into artificial intelligence with start-up Krutrim. The scooter business said in December it would seek to raise Rs55bn ($661mn) in the IPO, with proceeds being used to build a battery factory in India, fund research and development, and pay off debts at the loss-making start-up.

As India’s first listed electric vehicle company, Ola Electric would give investors an initial opportunity to bet on the country’s EV adoption, which is so far concentrated in two-wheelers in one of the world’s largest markets for vehicles. However, enthusiasm for richly valued newcomers has waned since the heady days of 2021. Then, internet companies including fintech, delivery and e-commerce services were all the rage, enjoying record listing sizes, only for their shares to sink soon after over concerns about profitability.

2.25% teens aged between 14-18 can't read grade 2 text fluently: ASER report

The ASER 2023 'Beyond Basics' survey, released on Wednesday, revealed that while 86.8 per cent of 14-18-year-olds are enrolled in an educational institution, 25 per cent of this age group cannot read a second-grade level text fluently in their regional language.

While testing their basic maths skills, the report also found that "nearly 85 per cent of surveyed youth can measure length using a scale when the starting point is 0 cm. This proportion drops sharply to 39 per cent when the starting point is moved. Overall, close to 50 per cent of youth can do other common calculations such as calculating time, adding weights and applying the unitary method."

"More than half struggle with division (3-digit by 1-digit) problems. Only 43.3 per cent of 14-18-year-olds are able to do such problems correctly. This skill is usually expected in third and fourth grade," the report said.

The survey, conducted in 28 districts across 26 states, also highlighted that only 28.1 per cent of women are likely to pursue STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) courses as against 36.3 per cent of men in the same age bracket.

It further highlighted that a little over half can read sentences in English at 57.3 per cent. Of those who can read sentences in English, almost three-quarters can tell their meanings (73.5 per cent). 

3.The much-touted, time-saving FASTag has already run its course. Ten years after it was first introduced, the government is planning to replace it with GPS-based toll collection.

All vehicles will need a GPS tracker to cross major highways. There are privacy concerns though.

The GPS-based system will calculate (and charge) tolls based on the distance that the vehicle traverses down a geo-fenced path. If this system works as advertised, not only will cars no longer have to slow down at a toll plaza, it will allow us to radically redesign our approach to toll collection by establishing tolls for any section of a road that we choose. Read on to understand Rahul Mattan’s concerns on potential privacy issues.

4.The world’s five richest men have seen their fortunes more than double since 2020, while over the same period five billion people have become poorer, according to new research published by Oxfam.

The research conducted by Oxfam shows that while rich countries in the Global North represent just 21 percent of the world’s population, they hold 69 percent of global wealth and are home to 74 percent of the world’s billionaire wealth. And share ownership overwhelmingly benefits the richest: the wealthiest 1 percent own 43 percent of all global financial assets.

5.Stop serving the compliment sandwich, opines Prof Adam Grant of Wharton Business School, in a latest blog post.Criticism between two slices of praise is not as effective as as it looks.

6.Apple beat Samsung in global smartphone sales for the first time ever, but in a shrinking smartphone market. The US-based company shipped nearly 235 million units last year, compared to its South Korean rival’s 227 million.

Samsung may be about to launch a flagship Galaxy model with built-in voice translation and a robust suite of AI features, but looking back to 2023 shows that the company will need a lot of excitement to hit the biggest sales goal of all. Apple has secured the top spot in the global smartphone rankings, with Samsung in second place for the first time since 2010, according to International Data Corp.’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker report.

Meanwhile, A 30% drop in iPhone sales in China has forced Apple to offer discounts on its phones, including the latest iPhone 15 series. Apple’s sales woes coincided with Huawei making a comeback with its slick Mate 60 phone, reported Reuters.

Apple is offering rare discounts on its iPhones in China, cutting retail prices by as much as 500 yuan ($70) amid growing competitive pressure in the world's biggest smartphone market.

The U.S. tech giant cut prices of some iPhones by 5%, its Chinese website showed on Monday. The time-limited promotion, branded as a Lunar New Year event, will last from Jan. 18 through Jan. 21 in a lead-up to the holiday in mid-February.

7.The U.S. is expected to redesignate Yemen’s Houthis as a terrorist group and reportedly launched a new strike on the militants, amid a growing expansion of the Israel-Hamas war.

The latest moves came as the EU prepared to send its own military mission to protect freedom of navigation in the Red Sea, part of efforts to undermine what The Washington Post’s David Ignatius described as the Houthis’ “bottleneck power” — the ability to constrain access to key thoroughfares, in this case the Suez Canal — which he wrote was “an increasingly important but little discussed weakness in the global economy.” Not everyone was supportive of the U.S. measures: France eschewed participation in the U.S. strikes to avoid “escalation” of the conflict while Beijing warned Washington against attacks. The moves came as Iran hit purported military targets in Pakistan— the third country targeted by Tehran’s arsenal in recent days.

In Gaza, there were some, limited, signs of hope: Two Qatari planes carrying medical supplies for hostages held in the enclave landed in Egypt as part of a Doha-mediated deal, which the White House said could lead to the release of captives. Israel’s offensive in Gaza showed no indications of letting up, though, with more than 150 people reported killed in the past 24 hours, and the war entering what The Wall Street Journal said was “its most perilous phase yet” with Israeli troops closing in on an ever-denser population of Palestinians.