Rajesh Jain

WSJ: “Artificial intelligence work assistants were designed to provide businesses a relatively easy avenue into the cutting edge technology. It isn’t quite turning out that way, with chief information officers saying it requires a heavy internal lift to get full value from the pricey tools…Working in tandem with the Microsoft or Google enterprise suites and large bodies of enterprise data—including emails, documents and spreadsheets—the promise is that the tools can deliver reliable answers to questions such as “what are our latest sales figures?” But that isn’t always the case—in part because the enterprise data they are accessing isn’t always up-to-date or accurate and in part because the tools themselves are still maturing…Google Cloud Chief Evangelist Richard Seroter said he believes the desire to use tools like Gemini for Google Workspace is pushing organizations to do the type of data management work they might have been sluggish about in the past. “If you don’t have your data house in order, AI is going to be less valuable than it would be if it was,” he said. “You can’t just buy six units of AI and then magically change your business.””

Rama Bijapurkar: “Based on the speed and scale of adoption of digital utilities and the data on access to amenities and enrolment in higher education as well as primary schools, the “aspiring India” does seem to be larger than the “hopeless India”, with “economic opportunity” being a proposition with more pull than “social justice”. But custodians of both narratives have their work cut out for them — one rides a tiger of unleashed aspirations that must be fulfilled, requiring new policies actions on steroids to feed the opportunity hungry millions and build a bridge from aspiration to possibility. The other needs to truly want to empower the disadvantaged to find their way to be a part of the new India rather than go back to the old days, and to build a bridge of inclusion through enablement.”

NYTimes: “The next big boom in tech is a long-awaited gift for wonky consultants. From Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey & Company to IBM and Accenture, sales are growing and hiring is on the rise because companies are in desperate need of technology Sherpas who can help them figure out what generative A.I. means and how it can help their businesses. While the tech industry is casting about for ways to make money off generative A.I., the consultants have begun cashing in.”

Akash Prakash: “[India] remains a very good long term story — one of the best globally but very expensive. Global investors are hesitant to be sucked in today, and need a correction or, at the minimum, a period of consolidation. The two best markets over the last 30 years have been India and the US. Their scale and persistence of outperformance are impressive. They are also the two most expensive today. Does one play reversion to the mean and invest outside these two markets, or bet on continued outperformance? This is the question exercising the minds of the smart money.”

WSJ: “Continuing on our current fiscal course will mean a gradual loss of America’s financial independence followed by an abrupt economic decline. The U.S. will have to ask the rest of the world to finance its debt, and it’s reckless to assume that other nations will do so indefinitely. The risk is that countries the U.S. relies on will draw back gradually—and then suddenly, when some unforeseen shock crystallizes their mounting doubts. As the late economist Herb Stein quipped, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” We have to recognize the consequences of these realities and start taking steps to secure America’s fiscal future.”

FT: “The word “demography” triggers a glaze-over mechanism in the minds of all too many of us. Yes, populations are ageing, there are ever smaller cohorts of women of childbearing age and less children today mean less workers and taxpayers tomorrow. But surely the world is overpopulated, and the issue of world population decline is a problem for the future? No, no, no says demographer Paul Morland. It was a problem for the future but now it has arrived, and we had better wake up and deal with it. Hats off then to Morland. Firstly, he has written a highly readable book, No One Left, laying out everything we need to know on this subject including the consequences of ageing and shrinking populations. Then he argues for a solution, and it is one that many really don’t want to hear. His subtitle is “Why the World Needs More Children” but I bet that if his publishers had let him, he would gladly have had “Read This First and Then Be Fruitful and Multiply”, instead.”

NYTimes: “The history of life on Earth is the his­tory of life’s remaking Earth. Nearly two and a half billion years ago, photosynthetic ocean microbes called cyanobacteria permanently altered the planet, suffus­ing the atmosphere with oxygen, imbuing the sky with its familiar blue hue and initiating the formation of the ozone layer, which pro­tected new waves of life from harmful exposure to ultraviolet radia­tion. Today plants and other photosynthetic organisms appear to help maintain a level of atmospheric oxygen high enough to support complex life but not so high that Earth would erupt in flames at the slightest spark. Marine plankton drive chemical cycles on which all other life depends and emit gases that increase cloud cover, modifying global climate. Kelp forests, coral reefs and shellfish store huge amounts of carbon, buffer ocean acidity, improve water quality and defend shorelines from se­vere weather. Animals as diverse as elephants, prairie dogs and termites continually reconstruct the planet’s crust, facilitating the flow of water, air and nutrients and improving the prospects of millions of species. And micro-organisms, like those I observed deep within Earth’s crust, are now thought to be important players in many geological pro­cesses.”

Sarah Guo’s advice to VCs: “Eighty-plus percent of winning a deal is decided before you show up to an investment. The reason I believe that is that the first piece of winning is access, right? Do you know about the founders? Has someone introduced you? In venture, proprietary deal flow rarely exists but time advantage does. A big piece is also the work you’ve already done. This is more relevant for experienced investors but is also true for operators or people just starting out. A lot is on your references, your credibility, and your reputation. Who is going to call the entrepreneur and make the case for you? All of that comes from work you do over a long period of time.”

NYTimes: “In a global marketplace reshaped by volatile forces — not least the animosity between the United States and China — India shows signs of emerging as a potentially significant place to manufacture products. Multinational brands that have for decades relied on Chinese factories are expanding to India as they seek to limit the vulnerabilities of concentrating production in any single country. The shift to India could make the global supply chain more resilient, reducing its susceptibility to shocks. It could also boost fortunes in India, which missed out on the manufacturing boom that lifted hundreds of millions of people from poverty in East Asia — first in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, then in China and, more recently, in Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam.”

ET: “Looking beyond the country’s present demographic dividend, the Indian government is beginning to plan for an aging India which could be a reality within a decade or two…India is quite young. Its population of 1.3 billion has an average age of 29 years. Much of the country’s focus, therefore, has been on its “youth bulge” and the “demographic dividend” this should potentially yield, since the working-age population is greater than the segment of dependents. From 5% of the population in 1950, senior citizens were close to 10% of the population by 2016, and this is estimated to rise to 19% by 2050, when about one in five Indians will be 60 years or older, according to the UN.”

WSJ: “A basic black leather Birkin 25 costs $11,400 before tax at the Hermès store. Buyers can walk out and immediately give it to a handbag reseller like Privé Porter in exchange for $23,000 in cash. Privé Porter will then sell the Birkin on Instagram or at its Las Vegas pop-up store, possibly on the same day—box fresh, with receipt—for up to $32,000. All this for a bag that analysts estimate costs Hermès around $1,000 to make…[It] is one of the fashion world’s most conspicuous markers of wealth.”

Bloomberg: “While India’s factory ambitions are hobbled by its stifling bureaucracy and protectionist attitude to trade, it’s still possible for it to make a play as a global engineering workshop and research lab. The knowhow it exports will be embedded in products manufactured elsewhere…With a determined effort to lift the quantity and quality of the 2.5 million-plus graduates and Ph.Ds India mints annually in science, technology, engineering and medicine, it can conceivably expand its relevant talent pool. A little less red tape — and some improvement in civic amenities and quality of life in fast-growing cities like Bengaluru — will keep more of them at home with good jobs…In the past 25 years, the appeal of India’s talent has transformed — from streamlining internal processes to being harnessed in hardware sold to external customers.”

Nitin Rakesh: “CEOs must reshape their old mental models to build agility and resilience for navigating an evolving economic climate, societal changes and an unpredictable future. It is about identifying a seed of opportunity for transformation and growth amid any crisis and creating it themselves if it is not obvious. In practice, this can mean embracing innovation to reimagine an organization for a digital era, capturing cost and operational efficiencies and enriching the end-user journey based on customer demands. It involves flipping the ‘back-to-front’ model to become customer-centric, rather than service or product-focused, and leveraging data analytics, AI and machine learning to predict future customer needs.”

NYTimes: “Medium friends are genuine friends. You share history (such as the same alma mater), circumstances (an employer) or interests (rude jokes, the royals, thrifting or squash). Medium friends make you laugh, bring news, offer insights or expertise. But, unlike the closest friends, medium friends test the limits of your time, love and energy. There are only so many dinners in a week, so many people with whom you can be incessantly texting. Medium friends prove the lie in any naïve attempt to be all things to all people. And that is the problem with medium friends, the invisible lines you draw around them without ever being explicit — to them or even, possibly, to yourself. Reciprocity is the foundation of every friendship: mutual sharing and caring in a context of trust. The tension embedded in medium friendship is this absence of clarity, allowing for the possibility of what Claude Fischer, a sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley, referred to in an interview as “asymmetric expectation”: You may like your medium friend less (or more) than they like you. With a lover, partner or a very close friend, you may negotiate imbalances, hash out wounds or betrayals. But somehow such conversations feel impossible in the medium realm.”

FT: “History…offers some cautionary notes about the consequences of swimming in debt. Over the centuries and across the globe, nations and empires that blithely piled up debt have, sooner or later, met unhappy ends. Historian Niall Ferguson recently invoked what he calls his own personal law of history: “Any great power that spends more on debt service (interest payments on the national debt) than on defense will not stay great for very long. True of Habsburg Spain, true of ancien régime France, true of the Ottoman Empire, true of the British Empire, this law is about to be put to the test by the U.S. beginning this very year.” Indeed, the Congressional Budget Office projects that, in part because of rising interest rates, the federal government will spend $892 billion during the current fiscal year for interest payments on the accumulated national debt of $28 trillion—meaning that interest payments now surpass the amount spent on defense and nearly match spending on Medicare.”

Samuel Gregg: “Whether from the left or right, today’s economic populists are urging us to embrace demonstrably false ideas and thus flawed policies. But they are also employing rhetoric (“market fundamentalist”) designed to marginalize those who look behind the policy sleights-of-hand and reveal truths that contradict populist narratives: that, for example, we already live in highly regulated economies; or that underlying every industrial policy are special interests seeking favors as well as legislators inclined to bestow such privileges for reasons that have little to do with the general welfare. Populist waves come and go, but the economic damage that they inflict lasts. So too does the harm that they do to the liberal constitutionalism that places principled limits upon government power, including in the economy. Reminding us of these deeper truths is the wider and indispensable service performed by market liberals in our present age of populism.”

McKinsey: “Our experience and research demonstrate that leading from the “inside out” is the key ingredient to making a lasting impact with teams and the broader organization. This inside-out journey is nuanced and complex. It calls for personal growth, which means you must constantly be learning, listening, inspiring, and caring. Leadership is not only about those seemingly endless business-related tasks you need to take care of when you’re an effective CEO. It’s just as important to be aware of who you are, and what your shortcomings are, so that you can first change yourself and then lead others…We’re not suggesting that leaders abandon their hard-nosed leadership skills. The challenge is to balance those attributes with their so-called soft leadership skills (sometimes the most difficult to muster). This is a journey often traveled without much help or guidance. Some of the best leaders we have worked with said they were simply born with those qualities, while others said they were fortunate to meet some great personal coaches along the way. But no one could point to a clear road map to becoming a more human and authentic leader.”

NYTimes: “Streaming has long been hailed as a promising business, because companies like Netflix can add additional subscribers at little extra cost. The more paying subscribers a service has, the more the company’s costs can be spread out over a large base, lowering the cost per subscriber. But those subscribers want lots of options, and the costs of making enough programming can be enormous. As a result, a streaming service’s profitability depends in large part on how many paying subscribers are needed before those TV shows and movies become cost-effective. There was a time when industry executives hoped that number might be as low as 100 million. But now the consensus among many of the executives interviewed is that the number is at least 200 million, and possibly more.”

Allan Meltzer: “Governments have no intrinsic advantage over the private sector in hiring teachers, doctors, nurses, or other professionals, nor any advantage in building schools or hospitals. Rather, they tend to be at a disadvantage, out of lack of expertise, failure to refine their operations, or because they regulate themselves more heavily than the private sector, for example, by requiring regulated firms to hire only unionized workers…. When government runs any system, its employees often find it easy to capture. State officials also tend not to guard taxpayers’ wallets as jealously as if they were their own.” [via CafeHayek]

FT: “Birth rates in the world’s rich economies have more than halved since 1960 to hit a record low, according to a study that urged countries to prepare for a “lower fertility future”. The average number of children per woman across the 38 most industrialised countries has fallen from 3.3 in 1960 to 1.5 in 2022, according to a study by the OECD published [recently]. The fertility rate is now well below the “replacement level” of 2.1 children per woman — at which a country’s population is considered to be stable without immigration — in all the group’s member countries except for Israel. “This decline will change the face of societies, communities and families and potentially have large effects on economic growth and prosperity,” warned the Paris-based organisation.”

Bloomberg: “It’s clear that application makers are laser-focused on building AI tools. What’s less clear is whether anyone is willing to pay for them. New generative features let you craft pitches using Salesforce, summarize your employees’ skills in Workday, create images from prompts in Adobe Inc.’s Photoshop, and automatically draft responses to IT requests in ServiceNow. But a year and a half into AI mania, there isn’t much revenue to show for this work. For most big application software companies, AI-related sales won’t appear on the profit-and-loss statements till next year — or the year after that. In many cases, software companies can’t even decide on how to charge for them. Some are using AI as a pitch for higher-priced subscription tiers, others are selling “generative credits,” and a few others — like Zoom Video Communications Inc. — are just bundling AI features for free.”

WSJ on 50 years of the bar-code revolution: “On June 26, 1974, Sharon Buchanan, a supermarket cashier in Troy, Ohio, made retailing history when she became the first person to ring up a sale by scanning Universal Product Codes, rather than punching keys on a cash register. Fifty years later, we take bar-code scanning for granted. It is the normal way to check out in most stores. The cashier position is one of the most important—and trickiest—in retailing. Cashiers must balance speed, accuracy and security while leaving customers with a positive impression. Innovations at the cashier stand do more than increase productivity or profit. They reflect and shape culture. Before the 19th century, retail cashiers were uncommon if not unknown.”

Ravi Venkatesan: “India’s 65 million MSMEs employ around 25% of the country’s workforce. This sector is a vital job creator and crucial to the health of the economy. However, for micro-enterprises to grow to small enterprises and then medium enterprises and beyond, the cost is almost prohibitive. One of the key factors that is crushing the growth prospects of MSMEs is access to finance…Realising receivables at the right time can enable MSMEs to thrive, expand their operations and in fact, have a better quality of output, leading to the betterment of the sector as a whole. The ripple effect of prompt payments can lead to a movement of mass entrepreneurship, which in turn will lead to further job-creation and the strengthening of our country’s economy.”