BUSINESS
India’s growth needs to be powered by greater consumption
India’s resilience will come from broad-basing domestic spending with better-quality jobs and higher purchasing power. For a country of 1.4 billion people to be driven by just 100 million consumers will store up trouble
BUSINESS
Byju's: How the world’s most valuable learning app became a trap
Would Byju’s have had a less glamorous but more stable run as a nonprofit like Khan Academy? Raveendran was in too much of a hurry to find out. The founder and his VC backers chose blistering growth over social relevance and have ended up in the deep hole they are in now
BUSINESS
Beware of quantum computer heists stealing your money
By 2030, a $1 billion quantum computer may be able to break RSA Laboratories’ widely used 2048 bit encryption. As the ChatGPT-induced revolution in generative artificial intelligence has shown, meaningful breakthroughs can elude a field for decades. But once they do occur, they can multiply at an overwhelming speed
BUSINESS
Desperate retail investors drive India’s options craze
Last month’s total turnover of $78 trillion from futures and options on indexes and stocks trumped the $178 billion from shares changing hands on India’s National Stock Exchange by a multiple of 441. No other major market in the world is as lopsided
BUSINESS
China: Yuan is finally showing some muscle in international trade
Ignoring the yuan’s rise because of China's recent economic troubles might be a mistake. Thanks to the country’s cumbersome capital controls, sending cash out of China has always been problematic and unpredictable. But that is poised to change now as the country takes small steps towards full capital account convertibility
BUSINESS
The murky uses of India’s private credit funds
Alternative funds will continue to be the fastest-growing segment of India’s investment landscape. This growth was made possible by light-touch regulation: As conduits of foreign capital into the country, the industry has enjoyed a lot of latitude. But now that the local saver is getting entangled, expect an end to private funds’ freewheeling ways
BUSINESS
ASEAN countries vying for Indian tourists should spur India to offer better at home
It used to be that Goa hotels would fill rooms one year in advance with Russian tour groups at deep discounts. Now they don’t need to. Plenty of domestic travelers are queuing up to book one week ahead. While that’s a testament to rising prosperity, surely it’s also a signal to build new capacity
BUSINESS
Blockchain may hold the answer to fixing a $2.2 trillion FX risk
After 50 years of trying to speed up cross-border money exchange, technology may have an answer. Completing timed settlement in the existing architecture is fraught with friction but customers are increasingly demanding near instantaneous international transactions just like they do within their national borders
BUSINESS
Tokenise stocks, bonds, funds, but proceed with care
It’s one thing for institutions to exchange value among themselves in private digital networks supervised by a central authority, but things could get messy with intermediaries selling tokenised stocks, bonds or funds to the public in an open marketplace where anyone can participate anonymously, especially with scams abounding
BUSINESS
Singapore startups struggle to find fintech talent amid competition with Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong
Since 2011, Singaporean voters have sent a consistently strong message that they would like fewer foreigners in their midst. Strict controls on overseas-worker visas since then have affected all industries, including fintech. While the local talent pool is limited in breadth and depth, hiring overseas remains a hot-button political issue
BUSINESS
India needs faster trains to compete with China on exports
What has local train travel got to do with exports? Analysis suggests a strong link. A one-standard-deviation increase in geographic integration leads to a 4% rise in a firm’s export revenue, driven by a 5% reduction in the unit price of exported products and a 9% increase in export volume
BUSINESS
It’s time for a single QR code for all the world’s payments
A move toward integrating disparate apps so that one day a single QR will work anywhere in the world should lead to a vast open loop in which even the smallest of businesses can go cashless and accept funds from any customer, local or foreign
BUSINESS
Outsourcing Crunch: India’s sell-side researchers should say what they mean
Around 2016 and 2017, most banking analysts in India kept missing the deterioration in lenders’ asset quality. Now it’s the turn of the outsourcing firms. By taking recourse to anodyne language such as negative net addition that misses the scale of the problem, analysts aren’t doing their core audience any favours
BUSINESS
India’s war on informal labour is bad for workers
The compliance burden of GST has put smaller firms, which are larger job creators, at a disadvantage. The productivity gains from the GST’s original promise of unifying the country into a single market have gone almost entirely to large businesses and digital startups — and therefore, to a small fraction of the workforce
TRENDS
World Cup & GDP: India's Taylor Swift moment is marred by the taxman
The two month cricketing extravaganza coupled with cricket fever in India could produce a bonanza for the Indian economy. But a tax demand that could be as high as $18 billion threatens to kill booming fantasy sports mobile gaming platforms or drive them underground
BUSINESS
India’s banks are making $64 billion from free, cashless payments
The UPI online payment system that is familiar, fast, and free has clearly only scratched the surface of its potential. For India’s initially reluctant banks that have turned a giveaway into a catalyst for last year’s 38% revenue growth, it makes sense to not upset the status quo
BUSINESS
Resources giant Vedanta is splitting to overcome debt overhang
With a $3 billion iceberg of dollar bonds due over the next two years, Anil Agarwal's Vedanta Ltd, the Indian publicly traded firm controlled by privately held Vedanta Resources, has announced a plan to split itself into six companies. It is going to be a touch-and-go affair for the Indian billionaire
BUSINESS
Could Backoffice 3.0 be India's third way?
Multinationals are showing the country how to stay ahead of the AI challenge — and catch up to rival China
BUSINESS
India's trade policy works in Vietnam's favour
Though policymakers are convinced that their strategy of imposing high customs duties and offering production linked incentives is a masterstroke, an industry study has found that these come with a cost disadvantage of 4% against Vietnam, which could start hurting when the incentives eventually end
BUSINESS
RBI is caught between tomatoes and cookies in the inflation fight
Food prices are sending confusing signals — cookies are becoming more affordable, but meals are turning more expensive. Demand is weak, particularly in rural areas. And yet, most Indian consumer staples firms’ profitability is on the mend. After shrinking pack sizes last year, now they can afford to stuff more commodities into them
BUSINESS
It’s time to get real about the rupee’s global role
Making India an easier place to do business, reversing the return in recent years of protectionist tariffs, allowing Indian tourists more freedom to use UPI overseas without having to bother about the taxman, and deepening domestic financial markets will all yield bigger gains than promoting the local currency abroad with bilateral agreements and photo-ops
BUSINESS
Singapore’s 'Greedflation': The island-state's power squeeze is tighter than its housing crunch
Singapore's landlords may be able to squeeze out a few more quarters of rent increases before enough new housing supply gives tenants a semblance of bargaining power. Meanwhile, the wholesale power market which is seeing exorbitant prices could also do with a lot more public investment.
BUSINESS
Why India risks falling behind in the AI race
Indian software services firms must build language models from scratch for themselves and their customers. Yes, it takes computational power and engineering talent to train neural network-based programmes on vast amounts of natural-language inputs. But to not go down that route is unnecessarily timid, given how businesses fear data integrity and privacy issues with publicly available models
BUSINESS
Can Byju's recover from its hard fall?
Amid mass firings, delayed financial results and a standoff with creditors, Byju's, the world’s most highly valued education unicorn, has to slash expenses and steady the balance sheet. After soaring through the pandemic when it bought all kinds of education-services firms with cheap money, the beleaguered company could get some respite with an Aakash IPO
