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- Arvind's Newsletter
1.Walmart infuses $600 million in Flipkart as part of $1 billion round
Flipkart, the e-commerce giant, is preparing to raise $1 billion in a fresh funding round; Of this fund raise, Walmart has already committed $600 million, DealStreet Asia reported earlier on December 21, citing regulatory filings.
Other internal stakeholders and a few external investors will put in the remaining $400 million, they added.
Flipkart will use the money to expand its operations, strengthen its supply chain and bolster its tech capabilities. To be sure, this is not a pre-IPO round and another fundraise can be expected next year, sources said.
Meanwhile, Adani family plans $1 billion investment in green energy arm,as the group races to reach ambitious green goals while facing maturing bonds next year. Adani Green Energy Ltd. is looking to issue preferential shares to the company’s founders for meeting expansion and refinancing needs.
2.Tatas may get admin control of Jamshedpur again
The pieces are falling in place for the Tata group to regain full control of India’s oldest planned industrial city conceived by group founder Jamsetji Tata.
Jharkhand has cleared a long-pending proposal to give Jamshedpur the constitutional status of an industrial township with special governing arrangements. The state had not done it all these years, fearing it would rob the region of central funds.
Jamshedpur’s governance was in limbo and questioned in the Supreme Court as it was neither declared as an industrial township, nor was an elected administrative body in place to run it. The state’s decision will now lead to the setting up of a nominated municipal council with representatives of Tata Steel, the state government, and the local people.
The Tata group already manage utilities serving the city. A selected municipality will give them all the levers to run the city of 1.69 million people.
3.Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global are exploring a possible merger. The talks, first reported by Axios, could spur a new streaming giant to compete with Netflix and Disney+.
A combination of the companies would unite famous Hollywood properties, including the Paramount and Warner Bros.(WB) film and TV studios, and put a number of pay-TV and broadcast stations, such as HBO and CBS, under a single roof. Paramount Global meanwhile is in talks to sell its Black Entertainment Television network to a management-led investor group.
WB's market value was around $29 billion as of Wednesday, while Paramount's was just over $10 billion, so any merger would not be of equals.
The meeting between two companies which sources say lasted several hours, took place at Paramount's headquarters in Times Square.
The duo discussed ways their companies could complement one another. For example, each company's main streaming service — Paramount+ and Max — could merge to better rival Netflix and Disney+.
It's unclear whether WB would buy Paramount Global or its parent company, National Amusements Inc. (NAI), but a source familiar with the situation says that both options are on the table.
WBD is said to have hired bankers to explore the deal
The deal could drive substantial synergies:
WB could use its international distribution footprint to boost Paramount's franchises, while Paramount's children's programming assets could be essential to WB's long-term streaming ambitions.
CBS News could be combined with CNN to create a global news powerhouse. CBS' crime dramas, such as "NCIS" and "Criminal Minds," could be combined with Investigation Discovery and TruTV.
CBS Sports' footprint could be combined with WBD's. For example, CBS and WB's Turner Sports currently share TV rights for March Madness.
Paramount is under enormous pressure to find a strategic partner or buyer, as it's staring down a mountain of debt.
4.OPEC, the oil-producing cartel, is a waning force, unable to manipulate the world economy as it could just a few years ago.
Oil prices remained stable despite a war in the Middle East hitting shipping and OPEC agreeing to cut production. In 2021, when a grounded container ship blocked the Suez Canal and oil producers cut supply, oil prices and inflation surged, the Financial Times’ economics commentator noted.
Oil and gas prices have barely budged on the recent news. Brent crude is trading a little lower than a year ago while European gas prices are down nearly 70 per cent. US and European economies are much more resilient than two years ago to this sort of disruption and the evidence suggests the gains will persist.
But with improved oil and gas production in non-OPEC countries, notably the U.S (see Atlantic article below), and with increases in renewable energy and electrification hitting demand, OPEC’s power is reduced. “Peak oil is within sight,” — the International Energy Agency thinks it will happen by 2030— “and there is not much OPEC+ can do about it.
5.Graphene is the semiconductor industry’s secret weapon reports the Guardian.The super material could replace silicon in the next wave of chips
Graphene, hailed as a “super material”, is extracted from graphite, the crystalline form of carbon used to make pencils, and comes as a latticed sheet just one atom thick. Simon Thomas, CEO and founder of Paragraf, believes it will “fundamentally change the world”, altering the way everything from mobile phones and computers to electric cars, healthcare and military equipment is manufactured.
“Graphene and other 2D materials will change the status quo to provide technologies we have never ever seen before, and performance levels we have never ever seen before. In electronics it will have a huge effect on reducing energy consumption and creating faster semiconductors.”
Potential uses include quantum computing, magnetic sensors in a new generation of MRI scanners, and consumer technology such as delivery drones.
Graphene is one of the strongest and thinnest materials in existence, much tougher than steel but lighter than paper, harder than a diamond but more elastic than rubber. It is also highly effective at conducting heat and electricity. Read on.
6.Narendra Modi: ‘Our nation is on the cusp of a take-off’ in his interview with Financial Times -FT. (Modi who rarely gives interviews to Indian media has given a long interview to FT). Some excerpts from this Long Read:
Many Indians and global leaders alike are now preparing for what they expect to be five more years of Modi. The 73-year-old leader will be seeking a third term in office in polls due early next year, at which his party is considered the favourite. He insists that he is “very confident of victory” thanks to a record “of solid change in the common man’s life”. “Today, the people of India have very different aspirations from the ones they had 10 years back,” says Modi, dressed in a cream kurta and rust-coloured sleeveless jacket, and immaculately barbered and manicured.
“They realise that our nation is on the cusp of a take-off,” he says. “They want this flight to be expedited, and they know the best party to ensure this is the one which brought them this far.”
A third-term victory would be a vindication for Modi’s legions of supporters, who say he has built India’s economy and global esteem, improved hundreds of millions of people’s lives and put the majority Hindu religion at the centre of public life.
His opposition, led by the Indian National Congress and MPs including Rahul Gandhi, have joined forces in an alliance under the acronym I.N.D.I.A., which promises to “safeguard democracy and the constitution” in the face of what they say is an attack on the secular principles of the country’s founders.
During his nearly 10 years in office, critics have accused Modi’s government of cracking down on rivals, curtailing civil society and discriminating against the country’s large Muslim minority. Modi’s opponents worry that he would use a third-term victory, especially if the BJP wins a large majority, to shred secular values irrevocably, possibly by amending the constitution to make India an explicitly Hindu republic.
The claims of democratic backsliding — which the BJP rejects — have alarmed some observers in India and overseas at a time when leaders around the world are betting heavily on the country as a geopolitical and economic partner.
“Our critics are entitled to their opinions and the freedom to express them. However, there is a fundamental issue with such allegations, which often appear as criticisms,” he says about concerns over the health of Indian democracy. “These claims not only insult the intelligence of the Indian people but also underestimate their deep commitment to values like diversity and democracy.”
“Any talkof amending the constitution is meaningless,” he adds. The “most transformative steps” undertaken by his government, from a “Clean India” nationwide toilet-building campaign to bringing nearly 1bn people online through a path-breaking digital public infrastructure push, Modi says, “have been realised without amending the constitution but through public participation”.
In August 2023, India landed its Chandrayaan-3 unmanned probe near the south pole of the Moon. Just days later, it hosted the world’s leading economies at a G20 summit meant to elevate the country’s status, and that of Modi, who peered down from posters around New Delhi as world leaders arrived. India promoted itself as a vishwaguru, or teacher to the world, in everything from its digital inclusion drive to its campaign to promote the cultivation of climate-resilient millets.
India also hosted a “Voice of the Global South” summit and successfully championed the African Union’s admission as a permanent G20 member in September. Modi maintained close ties with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, in keeping with India’s decades-old non-alignment policy, but also cemented a closer-than-ever relationship with Joe Biden during a June state visit to the US when the two countries signed a raft of agreements in areas ranging from jet engines to quantum computing.
“The world is interconnected as well as interdependent,” Modi says, outlining India’s mix-and-match foreign policy. (Another senior government official, speaking anonymously to the FT, describes India’s current position in a multipolar and multilateral world as a “sweet spot”.) “Our foremost guiding principle in foreign affairs is our national interest,” Modi says. “This stance allows us to engage with various nations in a manner that respects mutual interests and acknowledges the complexities of contemporary geopolitics.”
When pressed on whether India’s closer relations with the US might be described as an alliance, Modi says relations are on an “upward trajectory” despite allegations made by federal prosecutors last month that an Indian government official directed a plot to assassinate a prominent American Sikh separatist leader on US soil.
“Regarding the best words to describe this relationship, I leave it to you,” he says. “Today, the India-US relationship is broader in engagement, deeper in understanding, warmer in friendship than ever before.” Modi brushes aside a question about a recent relaxation of US-China tensions, saying they are “best addressed by the people and government of America and China”.
On the Israel-Hamas conflict, where his government has mostly refrained from criticising Benjamin Netanyahu’s government — a key partner with which it shares technology and a right-wing nationalist world view — Modi notes that India has supported the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza, while reiterating its support for a two-state solution. India, long a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause, has grown closer to Israel under Modi, the first Indian prime minister to visit the country.
“I remain in touch with the leaders in the region,” he says. “If there is anything India can do to take forward efforts towards peace, we will certainly do so,” he said.
The idea of an economically emerging India is not in itself a new one for the world’s largest developing nation. But one reason the narrative has taken hold so powerfully lately is because Modi reinforces it, with his talk of India building a $5tn economy and having entered an Amrit Kaal (“age of nectar” or golden age in Sanskrit). It is also because tensions between Washington and Beijing have prompted a search by western democracies for alternative trading and diplomatic partners to China.
In his independence day speech in August, the Indian leader vowed to make India a developed country by 2047, when it celebrates its 100th anniversary, although some economists have pointed out it will need to grow faster than its current 6-7 per cent annual rate to achieve that. While some Indians are excited about this notion, others fear a false dawn in a country that they say has often fallen short of its promise.
Modi points out that India has progressed from being one of the “Fragile Five” (identified by a Morgan Stanley researcher in 2013, the year before he took power, describing economies overly reliant on foreign investment to finance their current account deficits) to the world’s fifth-largest economy.
Infrastructure building has taken off during his premiership, and Modi’s office rattles off the numbers: a doubling of airports to 149 from 74 less than a decade ago; 905km of metro lines, from 248km a decade ago; 706 medical colleges, from 387 before he took office.
Multinational companies, including Apple and its supplier Foxconn, are building capacity in India as part of a “China plus one” diversification drive away from the world’s largest manufacturing centre. Some have gone so far as to predict that it might replicate China’s take-off decades ago, with a confluence of fast economic growth,technological advances and job creation in manufacturing, construction and other sectors that transformed the country and the lives of its people.
Modi prides himself on being a capable administrator, someone who can cut through the country’s vast bureaucracy and get things done — from large economic reform to improving welfare delivery for the hundreds of millions of Indians who depend on services such as cash transfers and free food.
But despite a major infrastructure push and its status as the world’s fastest-growing big economy, India is not creating enough jobs, presenting a vulnerable point for the BJP as it enters a national campaign. Although many economists say India’s data on unemployment is inadequate, according to one widely cited measure reported by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, the rate is running at about 9 per cent.
Modi’s opponents led by Congress hammered the BJP on the issue in recent state polls, and have also attacked the ruling party on the issue of inequality. But the Indian leader instead cites unemployment data gathered by the Periodic Labour Force Survey, which he says points to “a consistent decline in unemployment rates”.
“When evaluating different performance parameters like productivity and infrastructure expansion, it becomes evident that employment generation in India, a vast and youthful nation, has indeed accelerated,” Modi says.
Corruption, administrative hurdles, and the skills gap among youth are other obstacles to business about which companies, Indian and foreign, complain — and which some believe could prevent the country from replicating China’s manufacturing-led economic take-off.
“You have done a comparison with China, but it might be more apt to compare India with other democracies,” Modi says when asked about this. “It’s important to recognise that India wouldn’t have achieved the status of the world’s fastest-growing economy if the issues you’ve highlighted were as pervasive as suggested,” he says.
“Often, these concerns stem from perceptions, and altering perceptions sometimes takes time.” Modi also points to the presence of Indian-origin CEOs at top companies such as Google and Microsoft as counter-evidence of a skills gap — although some analysts have pointed to the fact that so many skilled Indians go abroad as evidence that there are too few opportunities back home.
“It’s not a matter of needing to bring them back,” Modi says, when asked whether India should not be trying to lure them to return to the country of their birth. “Rather, our goal is to create such an environment in India that it naturally gets people to have a stake in India.”
He adds: “We aspire to create conditions where everyone sees value in being in India to invest and expand their operations here.”
Some Modi government officials have privately spoken about reforms such as liberalisation of labour laws should the prime minister win a third term. “We envision a system where anyone from around the world feels at home in India, where our processes and standards are familiar and welcoming,” he says. “That is the kind of inclusive, global-standard system we aspire to build.”
Modi’s most vocal opponents, led by Gandhi — the BJP’s chief political nemesis — have questioned whether India’s democracy will survive a third Modi term. Modi’s government has presided over a squeeze on civil society groups, which face strict curbs on their funding, and — according to watchdog groups such as Reporters without Borders — growing political and financial pressure on journalists in one of the world’s largest media scenes.
Gandhi has been among the MPs who have criticised Modi this year after a short seller’s report prompted questions about the Adani Group, the politically connected conglomerate from the prime minister’s state, Gujarat. The controversy around the Adani Group has highlighted broader concerns about the concentration of India’s economy around a few big family business groups.
Anti-Muslim hate speech has proliferated under BJP rule, the party’s critics say, and the BJP has no serving MPs or senior government ministers who are Muslim.
When asked what future the Muslim minority has in India, Modi points instead to the economic success of India’s Parsees, who he describes as a “religious micro-minority residing in India”.
“Despite facing persecution elsewhere in the world, they have found a safe haven in India, living happily and prospering,” Modi says, in a response that makes no direct reference to the country’s roughly 200mn Muslims.“That shows that the Indian society itself has no feeling of discrimination towards any religious minority.”
A question about the Modi government’s alleged crackdown on his critics elicits a long and hearty laugh.
“There is a whole ecosystem that is using the freedom available in our country to hurl these allegations at us every day, through editorials, TV channels, social media, videos, tweets, etc,” Modi says. “They have the right to do so. But others have an equal right to respond with facts.”
Modi points to what he says is the long history of outsiders who underestimated India. “In 1947, when India became independent, the British who left made a lot of very dire predictions about India’s future. But we have seen that those predictions and preconceptions have all been proven false.”
Those who today similarly doubt his government, Modi adds, “will also be proven wrong”.