The RBI released its 2024-25 annual report and everyone's covering the headlines - household savings up, surplus transfers at record highs. But buried within are research nuggets that reveal how India's economy is quietly transforming.

Here are the insights you missed.🧵👇 The Innovation Gap: India spends just 0.7% of GDP on R&D. Israel leads globally at 6%, South Korea 5%, US 3.4%. Most developed countries spend over 2%. We're making progress - R&D spending doubled from Rs 60,197 crore to Rs 1,27,381 crore in a decade, but there's a structural issue.

The hotel business is deeply vulnerable to volatility. Hoteliers run massive properties with huge fixed costs, while demand is driven by things they can't control - travel patterns, economy, and regulation. Through all this short-term noise, they must make long-term bets. 🧵👇 We looked at three major players: IHCL (the behemoth straddling every segment), Chalet Hotels (urban premium focus with rental income), and Lemon Tree (mid-market specialist with asset-light growth). Each offers a different lens on the same industry.

Something remarkable happened in India on May 26. Electricity prices on the power exchange crashed to almost zero. Not cheap - practically free. For several hours between 9 AM and 1 PM, power was trading at just 11 paise per kilowatt-hour.🧵👇 Generators were basically giving away electricity. The price hit rock bottom - less than the exchange's own transaction fee. The culprit? India's solar power boom.

We dug through 19 earnings calls across 11 industries to find the sharpest insights for this edition of "The Chatter."

Here’s a sneak peek at 7 standout comments from India's top companies 🧵 Ola Electric on regulatory issues about mismatch in sales data and RTO registrations is resolved

Today, we're diving into one of pharma's most interesting verticals:

Contract Development and Manufacturing Organisations (CDMOs). These are the back-end engines of the pharmaceutical world—they don't invent drugs or sell under their own names, but develop and manufacture for global clients.🧵👇 Think of CDMOs as white-label manufacturers dealing with layers of scientific and regulatory complexity. They make everything from APIs to finished formulations to complex injectables. For global pharma, outsourcing lets them focus on high-value R&D and commercialisation without capital risks.

Pharmaceuticals is one of the most complex, globally-entangled industries we've encountered. It's where science meets law, pricing power meets public health, and decades of investment can collapse or explode with a single regulatory call.

India sits at the heart of it all.🧵👇 Pharmaceuticals split into two camps: small molecules (standard chemical drugs like paracetamol made through chemical reactions) and large molecules or biologics (insulin, antibodies, vaccines made using living cells). India's global edge was built on small molecules, but we're learning biologics too.

India's defence exports hit a record ₹21,000 crore in FY2024—nearly triple what they were in FY2021. Defence stocks are soaring, but this boom didn't come overnight. It's the result of decades of procurement reforms.

Here's the evolution of how India buys its weapons.🧵👇 Defence equipment isn't like consumer goods. You can't just walk into a store and buy a tank. In India, there's essentially one buyer for heavy-duty defence equipment—the government through the Ministry of Defence. No government orders means no defence industry.

Is this the end of the dollar? De-dollarization has become a hot topic in financial circles with profound implications for the global economy. For India, with over $200 billion in U.S. Treasury securities among its $690 billion foreign exchange reserves, any shift in the dollar's status matters significantly.🧵👇 The U.S. dollar's dominance is undeniable: it accounts for 59% of global foreign currency reserves (versus euro's 20%), 54% of global trade invoices, 88% of all currency trades, 64% of the world's debt, and 58% of international payments outside the eurozone.

Copper isn't just any metal—it's the backbone of our modern electrical world. And if we're serious about a green transition, we'll need unprecedented amounts of it. EVs require 80-100kg of copper compared to 23kg in regular cars, and renewable energy infrastructure demands hundreds of kilometres of additional wiring.🧵👇 The UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) May 2025 report highlights a growing gap between copper supply and demand. Projections vary, but they all point in one direction: we need substantially more copper. UNCTAD says demand will grow by 40% by 2040, while Goldman Sachs warns a "net-zero" pathway requires 54% more copper by 2030.

Samsung is caught in a massive legal battle with Indian tax authorities. The dispute? $601 million (₹5,000 crore) in taxes and penalties—more than 60% of Samsung India's entire profit last year. This is not just bureaucratic paperwork; it's a high-stakes showdown.🧵👇 At its core, this is about how Samsung classified certain telecom equipment when importing it to India. Between 2018-2021, Samsung brought in $784 million worth of "Remote Radio Heads" (RRHs) from Korea and Vietnam to supply Reliance Jio's expanding 4G network.

The Taiwanese dollar (TWD) did something in the past few days it has not done since the late-1980s: it jumped more than 6% against the U.S. dollar.🧵👇 For a currency that normally wiggles by a few tenths of a per cent each day, that is quite literally a once-in-a-generation leap.

Tata Motors is splitting itself into two separate listed entities. The commercial vehicles business will become independent, while passenger vehicles, EVs, and Jaguar Land Rover will remain together.

This decision has been years in the making, but why now?🧵👇 The seeds were planted in 2017 when N. Chandrasekaran became Chairman of Tata Sons. Back then, Tata Motors was struggling—outdated car models, quality issues, poor service responsiveness, and the failed Nano project. Competition from Hyundai and Maruti was brutal.

The Reserve Bank of India recently published draft regulations on Co-Lending Arrangements, marking the latest evolution in India's co-lending journey. A concept that began in 2018 with a simple "co-origination" model has now grown into a significant financing channel.🧵👇 Co-lending is growing big: the total co-lending book of non-bank lenders (NBFCs) is now nearing ₹1 lakh crore in assets. From just priority sector loans, it has expanded to many retail loan types—personal loans (34%), home loans (20%), MSME loans (13%), gold loans (13%), and more.

We read through 17 earnings calls that happened over the past few days for companies across 10 industries.

Our brains look a bowl of soupy noodles but we didn't give up and managed to pick the most insightful comments so that you don't have to go through what we went through🤯

See, we do all these things for you🥹 SBI on Corporate Credit Growth

We're launching an experimental newsletter to help you make sense of the wild, once-in-a-generation shifts happening right now.

From trade wars to AI dystopias, we're curating the best content to understand our chaotic world. Please give us feedback :) Our first edition tackles Trump's trade war - historian @nfergus called it going "full retard." Pre-tariffs, the US economy was the envy of the world: solid growth, falling inflation, decent wage growth, and strong productivity.

Now?

Trump's 145% tariffs on China are the "greatest self-goal in the history of all self-goals." Small businesses face bankruptcy as tariffs exceed the cost of goods themselves.

India's top private banks have reported Q4 FY25 earnings, revealing a mix of steady loan book quality, moderated growth, and cautious optimism for the year ahead.

Today, we’ll focus on three banking heavyweights – HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, and Axis Bank – leaving aside the public sector players for now.🧵👇 All three banks stayed profitable in Q4, but growth has clearly slowed. ICICI Bank led with 18% profit growth, ahead of HDFC Bank’s 6.7% and Axis Bank’s flat numbers. Beyond the headlines, the results hint at deeper shifts in asset quality, growth momentum, and margins.

The IMF's latest economic outlook explores "the silver economy" - how economies develop to accommodate their aging populations. This isn't just a Western issue anymore; it's a trend most countries will eventually face.

Let's explore what this means for the global economy.🧵👇 Global aging is accelerating due to declining birth rates and increased longevity. The IMF predicts the average age of the world's population will increase by 11 years between 2020 and the end of the century.

India's polished-diamond exports have plummeted to ₹1.10 lakh crore, their lowest level in twenty years. This isn't just a problem for the diamond industry; it threatens India's broader trade balance and the livelihoods of over a million people. 🧵👇 Gems and jewellery contribute about 7% of India's merchandise exports, with diamonds making up roughly half of that. When diamond earnings fall, India's trade balance and a million paychecks fall with them.

The Gensol Engineering fraud case honestly reads like a corporate thriller. It has a bit of everything – falsified documents, money laundering, luxury apartments, and even a golf set.

Here's how a celebrated green energy company with explosive growth became India's latest corporate fraud scandal.🧵👇 First, what is Gensol? It started as a solar consulting and EPC (Engineering, Procurement, Construction) company in the renewable energy space. They later expanded into electric vehicle leasing, providing most cars for the cab company BluSmart, with plans to manufacture EVs.

Europe is stuck in what many analysts are calling the most precarious security situation since the Cold War.

The catalyst? A perfect storm of geopolitical developments. 🧵👇 What's driving this? Russia's war in Ukraine enters its fourth year, and Trump's administration has essentially pulled back support for Ukraine while questioning NATO's very existence and made it clear that Europe needs to fend for itself.

The US Treasury market—cornerstone of the global financial system—is flashing warning signs.

Why? It all started last week when Trump announced sweeping tariffs, including a 104% hit on China. These moves are shaking global markets, and the ripple effects could hit everyone, not just Wall Street.🧵👇 This was a seismic shock to global trade—Trump effectively threw a grenade into the system. At first, markets did what they always do in times of stress: investors rushed to the safety of US Treasuries, driving bond prices up and yields down. But that was just the beginning.