After more than a decade, India is getting a new bank - AU Bank - this is a HUGE moment for our banking sector.

It comes at a time when legacy banks are switching focus to premium customers - ICICI Bank has raised its minimum balance requirement to ₹15,000 and HDFC has raised it to ₹25,000

For the 1st time, a Small Finance Bank (SFB) is set to become a Universal Bank

Sanjay Agarwal, the founder of Jaipur based AU SFB has been on a 29 year journey from a loan distributor to NBFC to SFB to (soon) Universal Bank

Here’s how they created history ⤵️ Firstly, let us get this out of the way: SFB means Small Finance Bank, but AU SFB is NOT small!

AU SFB has a MCap of ₹55,000 crore - which puts it ahead of several legacy banks e.g. Federal Bank (₹48,000 crore MCap) and Bank of India (₹50,000 MCap)

It is valued almost 9X its closest SFB peer - Ujjivan SFB (around ₹9000cr MCap)

Sanjay Agarwal, founder of AU SFB rightly said: ”Coming from a humble background in Jaipur, if someone had told me that we would build the largest small finance bank in India, I would have found it hard to believe. Yet here we are—because I dared to dream and followed my passion.”

Sanjay’s journey is inspiring:

YouTube has 49 crore active users in India who consume an average of 29 hours of content per month.

If you’re not watching YouTube - you’re probably scrolling Reels (32 crore Indians are active there) or binge watching Netflix (300 crore hours of Indian content were consumed last year!)

The last time I visited a cinema was ~2.5 years ago; as a child - I would be going twice per week & wait in a long line at the counter to buy a good seat for a Sunday show

Here’s how OTT is silently killing India’s ₹12,000 crore cinema industry ⤵️ (1) Start with revenue - Box Office collections are flat

In 10 years, collections have grown at 3.5% CAGR - slower than inflation.

The best data source is the annual Box Office report from Ormax Media

You can see how pre-2018 (i.e. pre OTT going mainstream) - Cinema had a steady growth rate.

Then came the COVID slump

Now, has come the realization: Why go to the cinema when the same movie is coming on OTT in less than 60 days?

We’ve officially opened our 1st office in GIFT City 🥳

Last week, our team drove for 4 hours from Udaipur to GIFT City - in many ways, it reminded me of Dubai in the early 2000s (when I used to visit my father)

It was incredible to see the pace of construction and how crowded some of the other offices were on a Saturday afternoon!

Sharing a few insights on GIFT City ⤵️
Let us start with some facts & figures:

(1) $5.7bn of AUM has been raised by funds (AIFs) operating out of GITY City

(2) ~700 entities have set up office

(3) Famous investment firms like Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), Bandhan Asset Management Company (AMC), Unifi Capital, 360 WAM etc have set-up offices

Btw, 360ONE WAM and Alchemy Capital are located on the same floor as our office in GIFT City

Mahindra Group has announced a ~₹500 crore one-time ESOP grant to 14,000+ factory & shopfloor workers.

This is the 1st time in India where a Diwali bonus is being paid in stock!

And, this is the 2nd time where a conglomerate has allocated such a generous ESOP grant to blue collar workers - JSW Group was the 1st to do so in August 2021 with a ₹1,000 crore allocation!

ESOPs were earlier restricted to management & white collar roles - but this is now changing; here’s what you need to know ⤵️ First, let us understand how ESOPs work:

(1) ESOP stands for Employee Stock Ownership Plan

(2) ESOPs are a way for a company to incentivize you to stick around for the long term - they typically are granted over a 4 year “vesting period”

(3) To create long term alignment - there is typically a “cliff” (i.e. if you leave within one year, you get no ESOPs) and there is a “vesting schedule” i.e. every month or quarter - you get some credited some ESOPs

(4) Every ESOP has an “exercise price” i.e. the amount you pay to convert your ESOPs into shares of the company

(5) The difference between the exercise price & actual share price is the upside or financial incentive for the employee

In the context of Mahindra Group’s 2025 Diwali ESOP - any worker with more than 1 year of tenure (”cliff”) is eligible.

JSW’s ESOP plan has a 4 year vesting schedule - 25% per year at the end of each year where the “exercise price” of the ESOP is ₹1 - the current share price of JSW Energy is ~₹535

To put it simply - ESOPs are stock based compensation for employees - and this has worked out spectacularly for white collar employees in India:

The price of Coconut oil has doubled in 2025 to ₹500 per litre

Coconut oil is now the costliest edible oil in India - despite India being the 3rd largest producer of coconuts in the world!

Thieves are forming organized gangs to steal coconuts from trees in Kerala - something has seriously gone wrong with the global commodity market.

Why has the cost of Coconut oil shot up so much?⤵️ The reason for this price shock lies on the Supply side:

(1) The world’s top producers and exporters of Coconut oil are Indonesia & Philippines

(2) They were affected by El Niño from July 2023–June 2024 which disrupted coconut flowering and fruit growth.

(3) Since coconuts trees take about a year to give fruit, the cascaded impact is now showing up w.e.f October 2024

And, the response by these nations has triggered the price shock:

The Philippines has mandated coconut oil blending in diesel (India does Ethanol blending in petrol) —starting at 3% from Oct 24, rising to 4% in 2025 and 5% by 2026.

Indonesia is planning to restrict the export of raw Coconuts to ensure the availability to local oil makers & to stabilize the price in its domestic market.

Now, let’s come back to India:

Shoppers Stop generates ₹4600 crore of revenue from 300 stores across India

The company is largely ignored by media today - but when it was launched in 1991, it was the first family owned retail company which was run by professional management!

How has the company survived all these years? ⤵️ First, let us go to the origin story of Shoppers Stop:

In 1991, the company introduced the concept of departmental stores in India with their first unit going live in Andheri, Mumbai; it had:

(i) 50,000 sq ft of shopping space
(ii) Central AC
(iii) Massive car parking space
(iv) Clean washrooms

They introduced the concept of Self Service where people could walk in , browse for hours and enjoy the process of selecting clothes with or without assistance.

What worked for them?

“Don't expect quick commerce to slow down - a conservative estimate is that this will be a ₹3 Lakh crore market by 2030”

These words were spoken by Vipul Parekh, Co-Founder of bigbasket

This is the same bigbasket which was initially dismissed quick commerce; recently they have been forced to do a complete U-turn ⤵️ First, let us look at bigbasket’s journey with QC:

In 2023, while QC really started to take off in India, bigbasket stuck to its orignal scheduled delivery model.

But, they launched BBNow (12 minute delivery)

In Feb 2024, bigbasket responded by launching “Supersaver” across 40 cities which provided delivery within 2 hours.

Hari Menon, the other co-founder of bigbasket said: “We have moved the delivery service from being van-based to bike-based”

At this point in Feb ‘24, scheduled deliveries were still 65% of the annual business.

But, this was set to change:

Maggi is available at 52 Lakh retail outlets across India - we mix everything from veggies to cheese to eggs to make our "2 Minute Noodles"

It is served at weddings, in Manali, at dhabas outside offices & even on 15-min food delivery apps.

Therefore, Maggi’s owner Nestlé launched a franchise business called ‘Retail One Kiosk’ - the 1000th kiosk was opened this month ⤵️ First, let us cover what products Nestlé sells in India:

(1) Snack food : Maggi noodles & soups
(2) Condiments: Maggi magic cube, Maggi ketchup
(3) Chocolates: KitKat, Munch, Milkybar
(4) Coffee: Nescafé Classic, Gold & Sunrise
(5) Beverages: Milo, Nestea
(6) Milk based products: Milkmaid, Everyday

Nestlé ignited India’s coffee craze by launching instant coffee powder in 1963. Btw, my grandmother refuses to have any coffee apart from Nescafé - it has some die hard fans!

Nestlé has a huge portfolio in India - many of these products are consumed by millions daily.

Which brings us to:

The COO of OpenAI said: “You require an incredible level of (human) agency to extract the maximum value from AI.”

In a pre-AI world, the being the “idea guy” wasn’t valuable because action was expensive

In a post-AI world, being the “idea guy” becomes valuable because a lot of action can be offloaded to systems

There are 3 skills which are becoming more prized in our post-AI world ⤵️ OpenAI’s Chief Economist summarizes this incredibly well: “We need people to identify problems - this takes agency. But, it must be combined with the ability to target the right problem & figure out how to activate the systems to work on their behalf”

The 3 skills which are valuable are:

In 2023, Parth Jindal bought a 35% stake in MG Motor India which had < 1.25% market share

In one year, MG’s Windsor EV became India’s best selling EV - with 20,000 units sold in FY25.

Now, he’s buying out his JV partner to control 86% of MG Motors India.

35 year old Harvard grad, Parth is quickly emerging as the new king dealmaker in India ⤵️ Parth Jindal has been super active in the past 12 months:

(1) JSW Cements IPO roadshow - the company is expected to raise ₹4,000 crore

(2) JSW Paints acquisition of Akzo Nobel (owner of Dulux); JSW will pay ₹9,000 crore for a 74% stake

(3) Via JSW Sports, anchored a VC fund called Centre Court Capital and began building a new Bengaluru FC stadium.

Note: These are JSW entities where he is leading the show, as a Jindal family member, he also has an indirect role to play in other group entities like JSW Defense, Infra etc

What is the secret to making these deals? Parth is focused on relationships:

Last month, BYD sold 500 units in India - which is ~0.1% of its global sales (3.8 Lakh units)

With a 5 minute charge, the newest BYDs in China offer 500+ km range - this is almost x50 faster than the time it takes for my 2022 MG ZS to charge up for the same range!!

Wang Chuanfu, Chairman of BYD said: “Our goal is to make charging as fast as refueling petrol cars.”

There is a reason why Buffett bought 9.99% of this company and has made 15x return on BYD ⤵️ Every journey begins with the founder:

Wang Chuanfu, BYD Chairman, grew up as an orphan. He studied chemical engineering and started working in 1990 - he became a GM at a local battery company in 1993.

He took a loan of ~$2.500 in 1995 from his cousin to start the BYD - Build Your Dreams - battery company

The late Charlie Munger described Wang Chuanfu as “a combination of Thomas Edison and Jack Welch”

Wang is worth $30bn today - but he isn’t the typical billionaire:

(a) He drives himself around
(b) Works 70+ hours per week
(c) Shows up on the factory floor in the BYD employee outfit
(d) Stays walking distance from the factory

An early BYD investor said: “His life is all about BYD; nothing else. This guy is cheap - he’s saving money (all the time) for you (the shareholder / customer).”

Founder obsession → company succession:

Zomato has re-entered the credit card business with 2 new partners: HDFC Bank and Tata Neu

Zomato had a previous unsuccessful partnership with RBL Bank which lasted 3 years.

You can now get a 10% cashback on Zomato orders via the HDFC Tata Neu credit cards!

There is SO much to unpack here: HDFC Bank has taken ICICI Bank had on, it now powers 10% discounts for both Zomato & Swiggy ⤵️ Zomato’s previous credit card 💳

March 20: Launched two variants Classic (5% cashback) and Black (10% cashback); powered by RBL Bank

Doomed to fail, there were no caps on spending… cards were nerfed in Sept ‘22 and in April ‘23, the co-brand partnership ended…

Swiggy, on the other hand, learned all the right lessons - capped cashback at ₹1.5K per month from Swiggy spends and a few more which are detailed below (bookmark & revisit):

x.com/Rahul_J_Mathur…

Today, you can buy a 2 carat diamond necklace from True Diamond for ~₹80,000 - this would have cost you over ₹3 lakh just 10 years ago

Lab grown diamonds are indistinguishable from natural diamonds and now, 52% of US engagement rings are LGDs…

But, what about India? And, the impact on our natural diamond industry? ⤵️ The story of diamonds is closed linked with our history:

(1) Golconda (modern day Telangana) was the 1st place where diamonds were discovered in 400 BC

(2) Our artisans produced the 1st diamond engagement ring in 1477 AD for Mary of Burgundy

(3) In the year of our independence 1947, DeBeers launched the legendary "A Diamond is Forever" advertising campaign which changed how we perceive diamonds.

India processes 90% of all natural diamonds used in jewelry; the sector employs 13 lakh people - 9 lakh of whom are based in Surat…

So, when did this LGD story begin?

Tata 1mg has 110 offline stores right now - it has plans to grow to 3,000 stores in the next 5 years

Why is India’s leading online pharmacy player going offline in such an aggressive way?

The answer is simple: 95% of India’s ₹2.4 Lakh crore pharmacy market is offline i.e. sales happening at local medical stores.

E-pharmacy might be a graveyard, but omni-channel pharma is the new hot thing ⤵️ Tata 1mg is a turning out to be a turnaround success post the Tata acquisition in 2021:

(1) Pole position: It overtook PharmEasy in Nov 2023 to take 1st position in the e-pharma industry (has ~21% market share)

(2) Offline is working: Revenue in FY25 is expected to be ₹2,500 versus ₹309 crore in FY21; the offline store rollout started post COVID.

(3) Operating efficiency has kicked in: Net loss was ₹1,255 crore in FY21 - it was down to ₹414 crore in FY24

Tata 1mg infact deployed ₹180 Crore in FY25 solely to open new offline stores.

But, omni-channel isn’t just stores - it is also Quick Commerce now:

My AI agent heard ~50 episodes of the No Priors podcast this weekend

I used Aida (a browser AI agent) and ChatGPT Projects to help me synthesize ALL discussions regarding AI.

In total I spent ~7 hours this weekend asking questions, taking notes & thinking about what I was reading.

Sharing my top 5 takeaways below ⤵️ Ep.82: “Agents are the new websites”

“In 1995, existing digitally meant a website. In 2025, it will mean having a branded AI agent.”

Bret Taylor - ex Co-CEO of Salesforce founded Sierra to build branded customer-facing agents for clients.

Bret explains there are 3 types of agents:

(1) Personal Agents – TBD | ChatGPT with memory is slowing getting here!

(2) Persona Agents – for specific verticals e.g. legal and coding tools

(3) Company Agents – Sierra’s domain: digital brand representatives built with LLMs and connected to internal systems

This is an excellent metaphor - if your website is your digital storefront, then an agent is your digital sales rep. CX is 80% sales rep, 20% storefront - hence the agent matters a LOT!

If you hear a lot of podcasts, yes, I know - Bret is a pod hopper - but his words carry weight - there is always a message behind the metaphor.

2 weeks ago, Coatue (~$50bn AUM) shared that AI could capture 75% of US market cap in the next decade

Coatue has deployed $1.5bn into AI (CoreWeave, Norm AI, Hugging Face, Cerebras etc) and is apparently raising another $1bn dedicated AI fund.

Last decade: Software ate the world - every company either uses software or is a software biz.

Now, it is AI’s turn to eat software & the world…

I read Coatue’s 102 page EMW 2025 report - sharing 3x interesting takeaways for both public & private market investors ⤵️ 1⃣History may not repeat - but it sure does rhyme

- Analyst comments on AI CAPEX concerns are the mirror image of their prev. cloud CAPEX concerns

- A new supercycle will come to replace the current SaaS/Cloud one: Historic ones were: Mainframe, PCs, Networking, Desktop Internet, Mobile Internet, SaaS/Cloud - maybe now AI?

- Leaders in MCap will change (like always) → 25% of Top 25 co’s by MCap changes every 5 years 🤯

India’s largest cinema PVR is having a tough time - it lost ₹280 crore in FY25 which is almost x8 what it lost in FY24

Ultimately, the cinema business is ALL about occupancy (i.e. seats filled in the cinema); low occupancy means no F&B sales - which means no revenue!

PVR occupancy is down to 16% in FY25, a sharp decline from the pre-COVID high of 36% in 2019

So, is PVR alone in trouble? Or, is the cinema industry as a whole doomed? ⤵️ In May 2023, ~450 single-screen cinemas in Telangana shut down for a month due to a lack of "good releases"

A typical such cinema was incurring losses of ~₹7,000 daily with ticket + F&B sales of ~₹4,000.

This is odd given that Telugu audiences watch 9 films/year on average compared to national avg of 6.

Btw, PVR itself cited lack of quality releases in Bollywood - so it has re-released 287 films in cinema since the pandemic.

"A bad carpenter blames his tools" is what my grandfather taught me.

He also said: "an entrepreneur spots opportunities":

Bata shoes are “Made In India” today, but Bata was created in the Czech Republic 130+ years ago!

Bata started operations in India 40 years after its founding.

It appointed an Indian as its CEO for the 1st time in 2020 (125 years after founding!).

For many of us who went to school in the 80s, 90s and 2000s - Bata was the shoe brand you HAD to wear. Of course it is an Indian brand, right?

Turns out, not at all. ⤵️ 1️⃣ Bata’s humble beginnings

On 21 September 1894 in the town of Zlín (modern day Czech Republic), Tomáš, Antonín and Anna Baťa put up ~$12,000 (in today’s money) to buy 2 sewing machines and hire 10 workers to launch the Bata Shoe Company.

They quickly pivoted from leather shoes to canvas shoes (the white ones we wore in school in India!)

1914: Turning point was Govt contracts in WW1 - they started to build “Baťaville” factory towns

I’ll skip all the European tragedy & jump straight from Zlín to Calcutta:

ICICI Bank’s former CEO recently launched her own YouTube channel (under the radar with with just 7K subs)

In her most episode, Chanda Kochhar interviewed Deepak Parekh (ex Chairman HDFC) and what he said on her show made me jump off my seat ⤵️ Deepak Parekh: “It's never been talked in public but I'm willing to share it now, (you asked me) why don't you come back home?”

i.e. Chandha Kochhar had proposed a merger between ICICI Bank and HDFC Ltd

Important historical context: ICICI served as the “sponsor” to help Hasmukh Thakordas Parekh (HDFC’s founding chairman) secure the license. Exact details of financial help if any, are unknown. But suffices to say - HDFC’s roots were indeed from ICICI.

Hence, Kochhar’s comment “come back home” is very valid

Deepak Parekh clarified: “I thought it won't be fair. It won't be proper with our name (HDFC) and the bank and all…” So, it didn’t happen and later the HDFC Bank <> HDFC merger took place

We (India’s youth) are very different from our parents

They have a savings mindset - gold, real estate, no credit card, home loan etc. Money was saved for tomorrow’s betterment (retirement, children’s education etc).

We have a spending mindset - MFs, many credit cards, fancy sneakers, international travel. Money is spent for today’s experiences & indulgences.

These are anecdotes.

Here’s some data which shows how India’s youth spends money ⤵️ 1️⃣Where are we spending? Hint: 40% on EMIs

Discretionary spending in India is a luxury.

40% of our spends are towards (financial) obligations e.g. home loan, car loan, education loan.

Btw, obligation spending is is HIGHER than necessities - utilities, groceries, medical.

Necessities is ~ 32% of spending. Discretionary comes in at the end with ~29% of spending.

Note: If you can’t relate to the above, consider yourself very privileged.

Jio will be launching 3 Mutual Funds in India shortly which are using Blackrock's ALADDIN model.

ALADDIN literally stands for Asset, Liability, and Debt and Derivative Investment Network

In total, ~200 global institutions use the analytics platform which represents ~₹1,750 lakh crore in AUM.

First time that ALADDIN will be launched in India by any institution: Jio Financial Services got off to a slow start post the spin-out from RIL Industries but it is slowly gathering momentum:

1. Converted to a Core Investment Company from regular NBFC
2. Launched Jio Finance super app
3. Launching Jio Blackrock AMC
4. Launching Jio Blackrock MF