From importance of Social Stock Exchange to gender pay disparity in sports, here are our most-read stories of the week

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1) Baby steps of Social Stock Exchange

What if you could donate/invest in making a direct impact on social change with the ease of investing in the equity market? This idea behind a social stock exchange (SSE) makes it a powerful concept. With SSE, interested investors can use financial markets to move capital towards social impact. In India, it could bridge the trust and credibility gap between the social sector and individuals and corporations with means to make a difference. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman proposed the creation of SSE in her Budget speech in 2019. Four years later, India's SSE is reportedly targeting to list its first few non-profits in August. Curious about how will SSE work? What are the benefits? What are the challenges? Read on.

2) Edtech playbook and common sense

"We always had a sense of who we were and what we were doing," says Jairaj Bhattacharya, co-founder of edtech platform ConveGenius. He was explaining why he and his co-founder didn't raise money when VCs were emptying their vaults for the edtech sector in 2021. VCs invested a record $4.1 billion in funding that year. Observing the recent turmoil faced by the industry where giants like Byju's are struggling, even a casual onlooker would ask what happened to the common sense of asking for money when there is a need, not greed. This rooted-in-reality sense of knowing who they are became the beacon for the rookie founders navigating the edtech storm post-pandemic. ConveGenius is reportedly on the path to cross the Rs100 crore revenue mark in FY24. Here's a deconstruction of the two unconventional entrepreneurs. Read more

3) The dawn of 'India over China'

For more than three decades, investment managers in India have faced unfounded scepticism as foreign investors chose China over India to make big-ticket investments. The underperformance of Chinese equities never swayed them from believing that 'one day dragon will deliver.' A case in point: Since its inception in October 1995, the MSCI China Index has delivered no returns to investors. In contrast, the MSCI India Index returned a whopping 2,000 percent, and the MSCI Emerging Market Index rose over 160 percent. Did they need a pandemic to shatter that belief and look at other emerging markets like India to park their investments? Because Bloomberg data now shows that US ETFs favoured India stocks the most among emerging market peers and invested $637.5 million between July 10-14. Is this the dawn of a new era? Read on

Discover

1)  Defying the odds

Continuing the thread of the Social Stock Exchange and the impact it makes, we recommend you listen to Durreen Shahnaz on the latest episode of From the Bookshelves of Forbes India. In her book, The Defiant Optimist, Shahnaz, the first Bangladeshi woman to work on Wall Street, presents a glimpse of her life and effort to make financial markets more equitable and inclusive. The founder of the Impact Investment Exchange in Singapore believes that economic systems that enrich the few can be transformed for the good of the many. In this freewheeling conversation, Shahnaz also talks about building an ecosystem to measure and prioritise social impact, whether India is ready to launch a social stock exchange, and why the rules for women to succeed are different—and often harder—than men. Listen here

2) Demerge to dethrone?

Reliance Industries has listed Jio Financial Services (JFSL) separately on National Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchange. Each shareholder of Reliance Industries will be eligible for shares in Jio Financial in a 1:1 ratio. JFSL is valued at Rs261.85 per share after the special pre-opening session on Thursday. The appointment of banking pioneers—KV Kamath and Hitesh Sethia (both ex-ICICI)—to lead the company hints that this will be a purely financial company, lending, investing, and providing other financial services. A challenge for other NBFC behemoths in India? Time will tell. But for now, in the latest episode of the ToThePoint podcast, we explain how the demerger might unlock value for investors. Listen here

3) What women get paid in sport

The team winning the FIFA Women’s World Cup that began on Thursday will take home $150 million in prize money, a 300 percent hike over the previous edition. But the number would still be only a third of the $440 million that Argentina, the men’s World Cup winners, took home from the Qatar edition last year. Pay disparity is a lingering issue across generations and most professional sports, and the International Cricket Council (ICC) has taken a historic step recently by announcing equal prize money for both men’s and women’s teams at ICC events. In this edition of Forbes India Let’s Talk About, we look back at some of the battles women have fought on this front, the victories they’ve notched up, and why there are miles to go before they sleep. Watch here

4) BFSI's ransomware woes

On July 4, the Clop ransomware group released sensitive Kotak Mahindra Life Insurance data on the dark web. In April, another group of hackers posted a database sample on a Russian hacker forum that contained sensitive employee information of the IDFC First Bank. Again, earlier in July, a similar data breach came to light when the data of more than 12,000 SBI employees was leaked on Telegram channels. The data included the employees’ personal information, such as their SBI passbooks, names, addresses, contact numbers, Aadhar cards, and PAN numbers. It's not just banks. On July 11, the customer data of Turtlemint, India’s first personalised online-offline insurance platform, was leaked on the dark web. Indian BFSI companies are frequently falling prey to cyberattacks. And here's why they need to bolster their cyber security infrastructure. Read more