Expensive iPhones and bull runs

The coffee shop business has definitely taken off recently. Over the last few months, I’ve seen multiple coffee-cum-work places open up near my house in Bangalore. When I visit Bombay, I’ve spotted a few too — some near Mint‘s office.

As offices remained shut even beyond 2021, many employees took to these coffee shops to work out of. Soon, it became a workplace of its own: buy a coffee worth ₹200, and nobody will disturb you till it’s closing time. Co-working spaces were a thing of the past. Maybe that’s why WeWork’s stock price is the way it is.

📈 Unlike WeWork, another company, Nvidia, has done exceptionally well on the markets. Since the start of the year, its shares have grown by more than 200%. The reason? It is one of the few chip manufacturers capable of producing semiconductors needed to make the AI revolution a reality. To continue and expand its growth trajectory, Nvidia needs more manufacturing bases: could India be an alternative? Our executive editor Leslie D’Monte writes about Nvidia’s plans for India.

🐂 This week, Indian investors also enjoyed the riches of their Nvidia-bought counterparts. Nifty crossed 20,000 for the first time, and closed at that level on Friday. This charge was led mostly by small and midcap stocks. Our senior assistant editor Ram Sahgal writes about the rise in the markets, asking a pivotal question: who loses out when the market eventually corrects?

📉 No market correction can be as ghastly as that in the US in 2008, when the Lehman Brothers-led collapse led to a shake-up of the global economies. 15 years later, our data journalist Deepa Vasudevan takes a retrospective look on the crisis and its impact.

🪙 Speaking of crises, let’s move on to cryptocurrencies. On the sidelines of the recently-concluded G20 summit, Ajay Seth, secretary of the department of economic affairs told senior assistant editor Rhik Kundu that India will soon decide its position on cryptocurrencies. HODLers might be hoping for outright regulation, but that might come at the cost of high taxes.

😣 When any company lists on the stock market, they are suppsoed to file a document with the markets regulator called the draft red herring prospectus (DRHP). In it, the company reports its financials, future projections, and any past misgivings. These misgivings include legal disputes. Our deputy editor Arti Singh uncovered that in its DRHP, EbixCash, a fintech company, had not reported a lawsuit filed in Singapore. The company is going for a ₹6,000 crore IPO, and this undisclosed dispute might put that in jeopardy.

💰 Tech startups have unfortunately yielded a lot of bad apples. Byju’s, India’s most valuable startup, seems to have a bad headline of its own every other week. The latest: the edtech is looking to sell off two of its recent acquistions to pay off a $1.2 billion loan that’s come due. The twist? Byju’s took the same loan to buy the aforementioned companies on the block. Talk about robbing Peter to pay Paul!

🔌🛵 India’s EV market is just about taking off. This charge is led by —green-plated number plates are far more common on two-wheelers than four-wheelers. However, this adoption is also due to the subsidies provided by the central government. To qualify for these subsidies, an automaker has to manufacture the scooter in India: the transport ministry found 7 companies, including Hero Electric, Okinawa, and Revolt, that didn’t follow their guidelines, thereby stripping them of the benefits. Sumant Banerji writes about these mishaps, and how these companies are hurting as their subsidised rivals garner more of the market share.

📱 Apple released the iPhone 15 this week too. Indians expected a cheaper price point, as this was the first iPhone that was manufactured fully in India. However, the price point didn’t budge, despite the lack of import duties. Shovik Das and Gulveen Aulakh write about the discrepancy in the price points.

🧘 In Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, Hrithik Roshan’s character has a life plan sorted out: work extremely hard till you’re 40, and then retire and live off your riches. It’s called FIRE: Financial independence, retire early. Sashind Ningthoukhongjam, our personal finance correspondent, spoke to four people who tried to follow that gameplan and retire in the mid-40s.

⭐️ I’d like to close this week by hat-tipping my colleague, Nandita Venkatesan. Nandita is part of Time magazine’s TIME100 Next, a list that features some of the world’s most prominent people that are destined to make a change. I’m proud to share a newsroom with her. Read about her achievements here.

That’s all for this week. I hope you all have a pleasant weekend!

If you have any thoughts, ideas, or feedback on our journalism (or subscription), please feel free to write to me ([email protected]). We’re a perpetually evolving news product, so any and every input is appreciated!

Best,

Shashwat Mohanty

Assistant Editor

Subscriber Experience Team

Updated: 16 Sep 2023, 08:51 AM IST

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