Sanjeev Prasad: “People have been giving a higher multiple to India for three reasons: long-term growth prospects, good quality companies and being relatively better versus other countries. But I am seeing a reversal of those arguments now. I met a host of global investors over the past four months, and for the first time, I heard concerns around India’s long-term growth prospects, which nobody ever asked me before. The questions global investors raised were about job growth and (lack of) R&D and innovation by Indian companies. Why are there no world-beating Indian tech companies? Indian companies, to my mind, may have become comfortable, given their belief in the country’s long-term growth prospects. They believe ‘we can continue to make a decent amount of money without taking some additional risk,’ if I may put it that way. However, making money easily is becoming more difficult for the simple reason, if you look at any sector in India, you’re starting to see more competition and disruption coming in. So this fundamental premise, which both companies and investors are working with that we have growth in the longer run and (there is) no change in the competitive dynamics, business model, etc., is facing a challenge because of technological changes.”
Fernando Nikolić: “Everyone under 30 is prematurely old (worried about savings, career, FIRE). Everyone over 50 is desperately young (Burning Man, psychedelics). My theory: Information abundance aged the young by showing them all future problems all at once. Information abundance also made the old young by showing them all missed experiences all at once. So now Gen Z talks like retirement planners and boomers act like teenagers. It’s so over.”
WSJ: “Here in the future, we call them ultralight eVTOLs (electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles). Of course, they don’t much resemble the levitating Studebakers and auto-gyrating Chevys foretold in pulp science fiction. The Pivotal BlackFly—the first series-produced ultralight eVTOL to reach the consumer market (2023)—doesn’t even have wheels. It takes off and lands on its curved keel. It’s also amphibious, behavior highly atypical in car.”
India Dispatch: “The result is a market that no longer resembles the concentrated duopoly that existed for over a decade until 2023. Amazon and Flipkart now find themselves squeezed between two models they cannot easily replicate because their expensive infrastructure, designed for catalogue breadth and next-day delivery, proves ill-suited for either 10-minute deliveries in dense urban areas or ultra-low-price commerce in India’s interior.”
