Arvind's Newsletter

1.Net foreign direct investment rises to $6.9 billion in Q1, shows RBI data; Business Standard

Net foreign direct investment (FDI) during the April-June period of the current financial year was $6.9 billion, compared to $4.7 billion in the year-ago period, the latest data released by the Reserve Bank of India showed.

The increase was due to an improvement in gross inward FDI, which grew by 26.4 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) to $22.5 billion during Q1 of 2024-25.

Manufacturing, financial services, communication services, computer services, and electricity and other energy sectors accounted for about 80 per cent of the gross FDI inflows.

2.Foxconn business in India crosses $10 billion ; invests $1.4 billion till date

Foxconn, which contract manufactures iPhones for Apple, has invested $1.4bn in India so far. The iPhone contract manufacturer, which recently inaugurated a residential complex for female workers near its plant in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu, said that its business in India has grown to over $10 billion.

The company is also planning to set up a battery plant in India, eyeing the electric vehicle segment. Foxconn’s stint in India hasn’t been without controversy. Recently it faced criticism on reports that it does not hire married women in its assembly plants. Chairman Young Liu defended against the allegations this week saying Foxconn hires “regardless of gender”.

3.India’s small, independent cinemas — once the bedrock of the country’s vibrant film industry — are shutting down at alarming rates.

There are around 9,000 single-screen movie theatres in India — at least 10% of which are non-operational — compared to more than 10,000 a decade ago, according to the South China Morning Post.

Industry experts blamed the decline on the rise of streaming services. Larger firms aren’t immune: India’s biggest cinema chain recently posted a $21.4 million loss — more than double the previous year’s — and said it would close 70 theaters this year. “It’s going to be a tough time for the big screen,” unless Bollywood can match Hollywood’s pace of releasing one blockbuster a month to keep cinemas afloat, one film critic said.

4.Start-up failures rise 60% in US as founders face hangover from boom years; Financial Times

Start-up failures in the US have jumped 60 per cent over the past year, as founders run out of cash raised during the technology boom of 2021-22, threatening millions of jobs in venture-backed companies and risking a spillover to the wider economy.

According to data from Carta, which provides services to private companies, start-up shutdowns are rising sharply, even as billions of dollars of venture capital gushes into artificial intelligence outfits.

Carta said 254 of its venture-backed clients had gone bust in the first quarter of this year. The rate of bankruptcies today is more than seven times higher than when Carta began tracking failures in 2019. 

The collapses are part of a painful adjustment for start-ups triggered by interest rate rises in 2022. VC investment into early-stage companies has plummeted, while venture debt has diminished following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank last year, leaving many start-ups stranded.

In the boom years, VCs would encourage founders to take larger and larger investments, inflating valuations, according to Healy Jones, vice-president at Kruze Consulting, an accountant to hundreds of venture-backed start-ups. It was a “crazy fundraising environment” in which “VC and founder incentives did not always align”, he said. 

Founders are now facing the hangover. The jump in bankruptcies is due to the fact that “an abnormally high number of companies raised an abnormally large amount of money during 2021-2022”, said analysts at Morgan Stanley in a recent note to clients.

5.Aging hits us in our 40s and 60s. But well-being doesn’t have to fall off a cliff; MIT Technology Review

You might feel like you’re on a slow, gradual decline, but, at the molecular level, you’re likely to be hit by two waves of changes, according to the scientists behind the work. The first one comes in your 40s.

For the study, Michael Snyder at Stanford University and his colleagues collected a vast amount of biological data from 108 volunteers aged 25 to 75, all of whom were living in California.

The study, which was published in the journal Nature Aging on August 14. Snyder and his colleagues collected a real trove of data on their volunteers, including on gene expression, proteins, metabolites, and various other chemical markers.

When he and his colleagues analyzed the data, they found that around 7% of the molecules and microbes measured changes gradually over time, in a linear way. On the other hand, 81% of them changed at specific life stages. There seem to be two that are particularly important: one at around the age of 44, and another around the age of 60.

Some of the dramatic changes at age 60 seem to be linked to kidney and heart function, and diseases like atherosclerosis, which narrows the arteries. That makes sense, given that our risks of developing cardiovascular diseases increase dramatically as we age—around 40% of 40- to 59-year-olds have such disorders, and this figure rises to 75% for 60- to 79-year-olds.

6.From Culture Fit to Values Fit;Ed Thompson, Psychology Today

Culture fit should be replaced by a focus on role fit and alignment with values.

Culture fit, once beloved of hiring managers, is now rightly under fire. Hiring must start with a focus on outcomes, and the skills and experiences needed to achieve this. Specific attention to "values fit" can achieve what cultural fit was always designed to achieve, but didn't. Read on.

7.The sports where women outperform men

Women can outperform or perform similarly to men in a range of competitive events, from sport shooting to ultra-running. However, the path toward greater inclusion has not been linear, and more questions than answers remain about the role of sex in athletic performance.

Øyvind Sandbakk, a professor of sports science at UiT The Arctic University of Norway and the director of the Norwegian School of Elite Sports (NTG), has found together with colleagues that the gaps in the average performance between elite female and male athletes have tended to plateau at around 8–12% difference in world-record results in favour of men. The gap can be significantly smaller for ultra-endurance swimming and larger for sports involving substantial upper-body strength, the study found.