Audio
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Ultraviolette's founders on the evolution of the F77 — Part 1: the hangar and the tech
Narayan Subramaniam and Niraj Rajmohan, co-founders of Ultraviolette, talk about the evolution of their first product, the F77, a performance electric motorcycle that's drawn interest from around the world. This is part 1 of our two-part conversation, a simple walkthrough of the Bengaluru company's first showroom, which the entrepreneurs call their first hangar because they say everything about their bike is inspired by aviation. They also spoke about the innovations that went into the bike's battery and overall design to make it a genuine motorcycle first and an EV next
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IndiGo makes history, and what's next for India's aviation market?
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
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Mojocare, GoMechanic, the infinite B-roll of startups fudging numbers—is the VC model to blame?
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
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Inside our defence and aviation special
In our latest issue, reporters take a crack at a topic that affects the entire nation—not as a consumer but as citizens who care about national security and India's preparedness for it. Looking at the private defence manufacturing organisations in India, the issue touches upon the Make in India, digitalisation, and even a startup-within-a-corporate aspect of the sector. Manu Balachandran, who anchored the defence and aerospace special, dives deep into the pages
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Manchester United: Will a change of hands bring back glory?
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
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Zoho and India's SaaS sector — large enterprise ambitions amid challenging times
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
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Vodafone Idea may get Rs 14,000 crore, but is that too little too late?
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
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Was there a CoWIN breach, and where do we stand on data privacy today?
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
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Dennis Woodside on Freshworks' $1 billion plan and beyond — Part 2
In this episode, Dennis Woodside, president of Freshworks, talks about some of the elements of the longer-term plan for Freshworks, including the role that AI will likely play in that. In about ten days, Freshworks founder Girish Mathrubootham is expected to reveal what he's been up to on the AI front. In this conversation, Dennis talks about the approach to AI that the company is taking. This is part 2 of our conversation, in which he also talks about the dynamics of his relationship with Girish and how that's shaping the culture at Freshworks
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Inside the 14th anniversary special of Forbes India
This year, we are celebrating our 14th anniversary. And Brian Carvalho, editor of Forbes India, gets into the details of this special edition that has invited leaders from business, sports, and entertainment—from TV Narendran of Tata Steel to Kamal Haasan and Viswanathan Anand—to reflect on the journey the world has been on since then.
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Does India need its own ChatGPT, or is there a better question to ask?
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?