Audio
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The blue bird is dead, Twitter becomes X: Can a 'super app' work in India?
Elon Musk reportedly said in a Twitter Spaces conversation that the blue bird logo was being cut down with blow torches, after he announced yesterday that the microblogging platform is being re-branded as X. Sanjay Swamy, co-founder and managing partner at Prime Venture Partners, joins us today to discuss what this re-branding means. Swamy, a well-known VC investor in India's fintech scene who's previously also helped design some of the payments aspects of Aadhaar, sets forth his arguments as to why he doesn't see a successful super app emerging in India any time soon
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HUL's Q1 results fail to impress, missing street estimates — what are its challenges ahead?
Hindustan Unilever's fiscal first-quarter results miss sent its stock down in Mumbai trading today. Volume growth at 3 percent, was well below the street expectations of about 5 percent. Does that mean a rural slowdown is persisting? And are there factors that will continue to affect topline growth? Forbes India's Samar Srivastava spoke with Sachin Bobade, vice president of research at Dolat Capital, to take stock of what challenges the FMCG giant faces through the rest of the year
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Kamal Karanth at Xpheno on IT services hiring, the rise of GCCs and other notes on staffing
In this episode, Kamal Karanth, co-founder of Xpheno, a staffing specialist in Bengaluru, talks about the current state of recruitment in the IT services industry in India. Kamal talks about the next wave of global capability centres rising in India and why software job seekers should consider these opportunities. He also talks about some 14,000 vacancies in the Indian startup ecosystem that still need to be filled while a funding winter is on, and finally, on whether generative AI is a meaningful opportunity from a staffing company's perspective
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Tata Group to set up £4 billion EV cell plant in the UK — India next, maybe?
India's Tata Group yesterday announced it will set invest more than £4 billion ($5.2 billion) to set up an electric battery cell manufacturing plant in the UK. The Gigafactory, as these plants are popularly called, will have a capacity of 40GW a year, and it is expected to start production in 2026. Forbes India's Manu Balachandran joins us on ToThePoint today, to discuss the significance of this investment — the Tata Group's first cell factory overseas and one of the largest automotive investments into Britain. We also ask why India didn't make the cut as a location
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Why Jio Financial Services is being spun out of Reliance and how it might unlock value for investors
Jio Financial Services, the financial services arm of Reliance Industries, will be spun out of the company on July 20, to be listed separately and trade on both the National Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchange. In the run up to the listing Reliance Industries has said that each shareholder of Reliance Industries will be eligible for shares in Jio Financial in a 1:1 ratio. Forbes India's Samar Srivastava joins us on ToThePoint today to explain how this process will work, and how the demerger might unlock value for investors
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Inside our SaaS special
The macroeconomic picture for SaaS (Software as a Service) is challenging, and most companies are feeling the pressure. Because on the microeconomics level, all the SaaS players are chasing the same customers. This year, Our SaaS special looks at what the recent slowdown in the tech sector means for SaaS outfits and how they manage their cashflows. In this podcast, Harichandan Arakali gives an overview of the industry and stories you cannot miss in the issue
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India's football team won't make the sports ministry's criteria for Asiad — what next?
The latest development in Indian football is that the country's sports ministry has mandated that only teams that rank among the top eight in their respective sports will go to 2022 Asian Games in Huangzhou, China — which was postponed from last year due to the Covid pandemic. The Indian football team ranks number 18 and so won't make the cut, Kathakali Chanda points out. The All India Football Federation and National Coach Igor Å timac have appealed to the government to relax the mandate. Katha and well-known sports presenter Joe Morrison discuss this on ToThePoint today
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Deepak Vinchhi, on plans at JuliaHub after recent funding from a VC firm backed by Boeing
In this episode, Deepak Vinchhi, co-founder and COO of JuliaHub, an enterprise software company focused on the open-source Julia programming language, talks about the plans at the company after a recent series A1 round of funding from AE Industrial Partners HorizonX, a VC investment platform in collaboration with The Boeing Company. JuliaHub is a commercial venture started by the inventors of Julia, an open-source language. The investment will help JuliaHub become a leader in offering solutions for the Aerospace market around Julia, Vinchhi says
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Disney reportedly explores sale of Star India—what does this mean for the ecosystem?
Disney CEO Bob Iger is seeking strategic options for its business, including a joint venture or a sale, as part of a broader cost cutting and restructuring exercise at the company, according to recent reports including from the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. Karan Taurani, senior VP and research analyst for media, consumer discretionary and internet, at Elara Capital, joins us on ToThePoint today to give us a sense what this means for India's entertainment ecosystem for TV broadcasting and the OTT businesses
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Chandrayaan-3 gets off to a roaring start with flawless LVM3-M4 spaceflight; here's what's next
India's flagship LVM3 rocket made another flawless flight today, taking off at 2:35 p.m. local time from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota to see off Chandrayaan-3 on the first leg of its journey to the Moon—an incrementally widening elliptical orbit from where the satellite will move towards its final destination. BR Guruprasad, a space scientist turned science writer and broadcaster, joins us today on ToThePoint to give us a sense of what happens next. He says success will rank India as the fourth nation to 'gently' land a spacecraft on the Moon
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Flipkart Big Saving Days versus Amazon Prime Day — what's different this time?
Amazon and Flipkart are both kicking off their annual discount sales starting the 15th — the one for two days and the other for four days. Ankur Bisen, Senior Partner and Head - Consumer, Food and Retail at Technopak Advisors, a consultancy, who's been tracking the ecommerce scene for close to 15 years now, joins us on ToThePoint today to give us a sense of what might be different this time. Ankur walks us through changes in consumer preferences for various categories and the evolution of India's ecommerce rules over the years