From India's Top 100 Digital Stars 2023 to new rules for H1B visa, here are our most-read stories of the week

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1) India's Top 100 Digital Stars 2023

The second edition of India's Top 100 Digital Stars list is here. A Forbes India-Goat (GroupM’s brand-safe influencer and content marketing solution) study recognises the work of 100 creators, keeping quantitative and qualitative measures in mind. For 2023, the list honours digital content creators who are changing the face of influencer marketing and creator economy in the face of ever-evolving audience taste. Big names from various categories—Kusha Kapila, Shlok Srivastava, Shivesh Bhatia, Raj Grover, Ankush Bahuguna, and Funcho—take their respective ranks on the list. Did your favourite make the cut? Let's find out.

2) Akanksha Monga: On travelling solo

Ranked 60 on India's Top 100 Digital Stars 2023, Akanksha Monga is one of the fastest-growing travel influencers in the country. Her recommendations feature on the itineraries of many travel enthusiasts and serial wanderers. An army kid, her love for exploring and travelling first manifested on a trip to Paro in Bhutan when she was six. The travel bug had bitten, but it would be years until she ticked off 25 countries from her travel list. Monga champions solo travel, especially for women, over content creation. Take a peak at her rise as an influencer.

3) Ankush Bahuguna: Men for makeup

There is still a long way to go before makeup for men becomes a norm. Beauty brands are enabling trailblazers to be at the forefront of breaking this taboo, and Ankush Bahuguna is one of them. Bahuguna's journey began at a different station, and it made quite a few route changes from the architecture stop to lifestyle writing to script writing for comedy videos to the current content creator junction. Bahuguna's focus on building his community brought him brands and has now put him at Rank 30 on India's Top Digital Stars 2023 list. How did he transition from comedy videos to beauty #GRWM reels? Here are the details.

Discover

1) Fali Nariman on Constitution

Fali Nariman is arguably the greatest living expert on the Indian Constitution. He started his legal practice the year the Constitution of India was enacted in November 1949. On the newest episode of From the Bookshelves of Forbes India, he spoke with Divya Shekhar and Forbes India Editor Brian Carvalho about his new book 'You Must Know Your Constitution'. On the podcast, he discusses pertinent issues, including how the Constitution can be taken to the masses, questions around sedition and censorship, national vs official languages and whether it’s time for India to have a new Constitution. Listen here

2) Sweet spot

The San Francisco-headquartered Celesta Capital—founded by Michael Marks, Nicholas Brathwaite, Sriram Viswanathan and Lip-Bu Tan in 2013—is at a sweet spot as far as its presence and investment in India’s fast-growing deep tech startup landscape is concerned. It is riding high on the recent partial exit from ideaForge Technology's successful IPO. Other deep tech companies in Celesta's portfolio include 5C Network—a radiology diagnostic AI company; Stellapps—which digitises the dairy supply chain through IoT; and more. Celesta has identified startups rapidly disrupting the ecosystem and is smartly growing its India investments. Here's how the deep tech-focussed venture capital firm will double down over five to seven years. Read more

3) Zip, zap, zoom, but make it luxury

Jaguar Land Rover India has sold over a thousand Land Rover Defenders—at more than Rs1 crore a piece—in the country. Combined with the even more high-end Range Rover models, their sales have grown by 72 percent in 2023. Over 25 percent of Mercedes-Benz India’s sales in 2023 have come from S-Class, EQS, Mercedes-Maybach and AMG models. BMW India sold over a thousand of its most pricey ‘luxury class’ models, registering a growth of 102 percent. Audi India saw sales jump by 88 percent in 2023, buoyed by its top offerings. What is causing this surge in sales in the luxury segment of the automobile sector in India? Is it the splurge by leaders of a burgeoning startup ecosystem? Is it post-Covid resurgence? Or revenge indulgence? Let's find out.

4) No gaming the system

The US H1B visa is significant for India's $245 billion IT services industry. Last week, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) related to the 'H-1B speciality occupation worker program'. The proposed rule intends to streamline eligibility requirements, make the programme more efficient, provide more benefits and flexibility for employers and workers and 'reinforce integrity measures'. This coveted non-immigrant work visa selects 65,000 people per year to enter American land, and the new rules intend to prevent its misuse. Here's how it will benefit or hurt India's services companies. Watch now