- Arvind's Newsletter
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- Arvind's Newsletter
1.Apple India FY23 Revenue hits $8bn on Strong Premium Play
Apple’s India business almost touched the ₹50,000-crore revenue milestone with sales growing 48% to ₹49,321 crore (~$ 8bn) in 2022-23. Net profit too surged 76% to ₹2,229 crore, as per regulatory filings with the Registrar of Companies (RoC).
2.Have Marwaris lost their Midas touch? An opinion piece in Economic Times by Harsh Goenka of Chairman of RPG Enterprises. Some excerpts:
“A Gujarati industrialist recently remarked, 'You Marwaris have lost the Midas touch!' Current public perception certainly seems to corroborate his observation. But have they really lost the Midas touch? My first point of search was data on the Top 50 business houses in the country. In 1964, there were 13 top Marwari families comprising 26% of the highest echelon of business houses. In 1990, the figure increased to 14 families comprising 28%. In 2000, this remained static.”
“Comparing the number of Marwaris in 2013 that made it to the Forbes list of top 100 Indian billionaires with those in 2022 showed that while there were 29 Marwaris in 2013, in 2022, the number had gone down to 26, but the number of Marwaris in the first 10 had risen from 2 to 4 in the same period. While these figures show the community remaining as relevant as one of the top wealth creators, it was equally obvious they no longer occupied centre stage.”
“This single-mindedness, while certainly helping them retain their hold on their businesses, did not allow them to expand their vision to other newer sectors, especially technology. As a Marwari friend analysed, 'We were more comfortable with fixed assets and more tangible businesses than those involving R&D, marketing, or tech and innovation. Sadly, on hindsight, we did not even favour education in engineering or chemical sciences.'“
“FMCG was among the fastest-growing sectors, with token Marwari presence of the Emami Group and Varun Beverages. Pharma, one of India's most value-creating sectors for decades, had Lupin as the sole Marwari representative in an otherwise large field populated by the likes of Sun, Serum Institute, Torrent, Cipla, etc. Telecom, India's sunrise industry of the 2000s, has seen only Airtel and Reliance emerging in virtually a two-horse race.”
“Scanning the core manufacturing or financial services sectors, the picture is markedly different. In metals, Jindals, Birlas and Anil Agarwal's Vedanta have near total dominance. In cement, Birlas, Bangurs, Dalmias and Singhanias are the most prominent players. In the stock market, Rakesh Jhunjhunwala and Radhakishan Damani loomed large.”
Another reason for Marwari deceleration was a lack of drive for growth and expansion. Marwaris had a very strong and tight-knit joint family system, where the patriarch ensured an equal distribution of wealth and workload among all family members irrespective of their contribution or capacity. As hard work and innovation went unrewarded, and the tight grip of the system made it impossible to leave its folds, this acted as a disincentive to the more ambitious, brighter members.
But the wheel of fortune is once again turning the Marwari way. Higher- quality education, exposure to global management techniques and better corporate governance have rekindled a new hunger for success among GNMs - GenNext Marwaris. A fresh upsurgence is on the way. India's vibrant startup ecosystem has a healthy representation of Marwari entrepreneurs like Sachin and Binny Bansal (ex-Flipkart), Ritesh Agarwal (OYO), Prateek Maheshwari (Physics Wallah), Anupam Mittal (Shaadi.com), Mukesh Bansal (Myntra) and Harsh Jain (Dream11), among others.
So, my friends, the reports of the demise of the Marwari Midas touch are greatly exaggerated.”
3.India’s quest to be the next whisky superpower reports Financial Times.
India now accounts for almost one in every two bottles of whisky sold in the world. The planet’s most populous country also recently leapfrogged France to become the world’s biggest market for Scotch. The country is a big consumer of whisky and it’s a major producer too – no fewer than seven of the top 10 global whisky brands, by volume, are Indian.
An inevitable corollary of all this growth has been the rise of Indian single malts; premium whiskies that are made with Indian barley, and distilled and matured locally. Unlike their blended brethren, these luxury drams are targeting a global market. And they’ve been attracting acclaim among increasingly broad-minded whisky connoisseurs.
The Rampur Distillery in the Himalayan foothills makes a $75-a-bottle Double Cask Malt “combines elegant dulce de leche sweetness with a ravishing rosewater/orange blossom/lychee perfume.” Read on.
4.Google paid $26.3bn for search default deals in 2021, executive testifies
A top Google executive revealed the internet giant paid $26.3bn in 2021 to make its search engine the default on most smartphones and browsers, after a judge forced the company to disclose what it claimed was highly sensitive commercial information.
The disclosure, which came in the US government’s antitrust trial against Google in Washington DC, marked the first time the company has revealed how much it pays to guarantee its search service will get pole position in front of users when they conduct a search.
5.Toyota,The World’s Biggest Carmaker Made a Huge Bet on Tech. Things Went Wrong Fast.
The world’s biggest carmaker had big dreams when it created its own in-house technology startup in 2021, writes Wall Street Journal’s River Davis. Executives said the unit, Woven Planet, aimed to help Toyota transition to an era in which cars were electric, internet-connected, autonomous and software-reliant. After three years of slower-than-expected progress, the full release of software to enable car updates has been pushed back.
The company says its ultimate vision remains in place. But its early missteps, described by current and former executives, offer a cautionary tale for leaders of traditional companies trying to integrate new tech expertise.
