Tesla cars, solar Energy, Satellite Link broadband internet, and an Aspirational brand (TESLA) that's captured India's imagination rivalling Apple. Can Twitter's mercurial owner soon bring his hi-tech electric cars and Starlink satellite connections to India? Forbes India's Manu Balachandran joins us on ToThePoint today to talk about why India and Tesla might need each other—from a boost to India's EV plans and internet in the remotest corners of the country to a new, stable base for the American company in the global south, ready to ship to the world
Interglobe Aviation, better known to Indian air travellers as IndiGo, made global aviation history yesterday, placing a world record order of 500 A320 family narrow-body aircraft with Airbus on day one of the Paris Air Show. Forbes India's Manu Balachandran, who tracks the aviation industry closely, joins us today on ToThePoint to talk about the significance of this order, which outclassed the 470 planes booked by Tata Group's Air India recently. Manu walks us through how IndiGo, by far the biggest Indian domestic carrier, got here and what's next
Another day in India's vibrant startup scene, and another venture's founders fess up to fudging numbers under pressure. Forbes India's Rajiv Singh joins us on ToThePoint today to ask who is to blame—the founders, the VC investors or the ecosystem itself. In the heady days of crazy funding less than two years ago, the rising tide masked the sleaze, Rajiv argues. Amidst a funding winter, there is more scrutiny, and Mojocare certainly won't be the last. Investors may have to live with this, but for the founders, "it's their name at stake," he says
With news breaking that a consortium led by Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad al-Thani, one of Qatar's richest men, is in exclusive talks to buy the iconic English sports club for $6 billion, Naini Thaker and our Editor Brian Carvalho discuss the rise of the influence of the middle eastern emirates in European football. They also spoke about how football fan following in India has come a long way from Doordarshan telecasts of India's own legendary clubs like Mohun Bagan and Salgaokar FC
Zoho said yesterday it was seeing consistent strong growth in what it calls its upmarket segment, meaning the larger customers, versus the SMB segment that historically had adopted its products. The SaaS company had said this previously in the US as well, in early May, that the upmarket segment now accounts for a third of its overall business, which is upwards of $1 billion in sales, annually. In ToThePoint today, we asked Atit Danak, a partner at Zinnov, and co-author of the consultancy's latest SaaS report, to give a sense of where India's software-as-a-service industry is headed
Perhaps Mumbai being Vodafone country is a distant memory now. And yet, Vodafone Idea remains India's third biggest mobile phone services provider. Forbes India's Salil Panchal joins us on today's ToThePoint to ask if news that Vi is likely to get Rs 14,000 crore in fresh funding is good news. What are the prospects for this company in the long term and when rivals are selling 5G services, can Vodafone Idea find a way out of its entrenched problems? We also speculate a bit about what might be the end game here
Ameen Jauhar, lead, applied law and tech research at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy in New Delhi, unpacks where we are at so far in India when it comes to our data privacy laws. Our conversation in ToThePoint today was triggered by the news of an alleged breach of the government's CoWIN database that threw up sensitive personal information of people who had been vaccinated against Covid. Ameen also talks about a parallel debate on what to do about the so-called non-personal data on which also, the government is formulating a policy
OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman, during his recent India visit, made some comments that were later taken out of context, leading to a furore on social media. Jaspreet Bindra, former chief digital officer at Mahindra group, offers his perspective on whether India needs its own ChatGPT and large language models. Bindra reckons that we have the brain power, but, and we speculate with him, that there is a better question: for example, should we instead unleash an Indian tsunami of entrepreneurship on top of what is already there, instead of building it from scratch?
Saurabh Chandra, CEO of Ati Motors in Bengaluru, which offers autonomous mobility technologies for the factory floor and the warehouse, explains different levels of autonomy in the automotive industry and helps us understand the significance of Mercedes-Benz getting its DrivePilot driver assistance solution certified at Level-3 for certain roads in California. The German automaker will offer this solution in certain models in the US starting next year. Saurabh also wagers that such technologies can handle Indian roads too, if we can figure out the "social negotiation" needed
TCS' global head of HR Milind Lakkad's candid comments in the company's latest annual report has put a spotlight on how a domestic "reset" has come in the way of women returning to work in the IT industry. TCS saw a marginal dip in the overall proportion of women in its workforce from 36.2 percent at the end of FY20 to 35.7 percent at the end of FY23. Infosys, over the same period, has seen a 160-basis-point increase to end FY23 with 39.4 percent. Forbes India's Divya Shekhar discusses what she's found and what needs to change to help women stay on
The latest rumour is that Instagram is working on an AI bot that could offer users as many as 30 personalities to engage with, according to screenshots shared by developer and tipster Alessandro Paluzzi. These AI agents or chatbots can "answer questions and give advice". We speculate on what this might mean for Instagram users on a daily basis, and how this impacts the 'social' aspect of the network