Weekend Bites: Tesla, Rs 2,000 note, and it’s dog-eat-dog in food delivery

In early April 2016, Tesla said it would bring its Model 3 to India, and started taking reservations for it. Several well-known names from Indian companies, including Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma, rushed to book one.

It’s been a long wait. According to reports, some Indians already own a Tesla, but it could have been imported. Because Tesla has not yet launched in India.

In May last year, Sharma asked Elon Musk on Twitter when he was coming to India to deliver the first Tesla at the Taj Mahal. This was in response to Tesla’s head recollections of his visit to the memorial in 2007.


Story of the week: Tesla is calling

It was Tesla bumpy in India. Two years ago, Elon Musk registered a company in Bengaluru to import cars, and talked about setting up company-owned retail showrooms. But later he gave up the search for showroom space and reassigned Team India to other parts of the world.

India has been steadfast in its refusal to cut the import tax on cars, which can reach 100 percent, causing the prices of imported cars to skyrocket. Secondly, the government wants to make Tesla in the country. Tesla wanted to test the market first with imports and urged the government to lower import duties to 40 percent.

Does this deadlock ease? Top Tesla executives were in India this week to meet with the government. It seems that the reduction in import duties is off the table for discussion. What’s more, It looks like Tesla is ready to set up a factory in India He put forward a proposal, according to the international news agency Reuters, which attributed the information to unnamed sources.

It appears that the Tesla folks were also here to see how they could develop locally sourcing components from India. The company already had suppliers such as Sona and Sandhar providing components indirectly, but the numbers were small.

Meanwhile, another international news agency, Bloomberg, citing “people familiar with the matter,” reported that the automaker short stop To propose building vehicles in the country.

Musk knows what the truth is.

In other news…

this It brought back memories of a November night in 2016. The Reserve Bank of India announced on Friday that it had withdrawn 2,000 rupees notes from circulation. Existing securities can be deposited into bank accounts or redeemed by September 30th.

Further news emerged from the central bank on Friday that it will transfer 87,416 crore to the Center as surplus for 2022-23.

A panel of experts appointed by the Supreme Court He said It could not infer any regulatory failures about Adani Group share soarings, and that Sebi had “put a vacuum” in its investigation of alleged abuses in the flows of funds from offshore entities into the conglomerate. But the six-member panel said there was evidence that short positions in shares of the Adani Group had accumulated before the Hindenburg Research, the US-based short seller’s report, and turned a profit thereafter.

Vedanta Limited’s efforts to support parent company and holding group Vedanta Resources began with this strain its balance sheet. Vedanta Ltd (consolidated)’s overall debt burden became 24 per cent heavier in the financial year ending March this year, its heaviest in six years. Analysts attribute this to the mining and metals company’s record dividend distribution despite a sharp decline in its profits and cash flows.

Srichand Hinduja, who died at the age of 87, was the patriarch of the trading empire that bears the family name. his death raises more questions About a group that is already in turmoil.

Tech that: A word from the tech and startup world

As startups in India face a shortage of funds, Sequoia India sees a new window of opportunity for startups in semiconductors, an emerging sector in which it recently made two investments.

“Some of our best companies globally were created in recessions and recessions,” Mohit Bhatnagar, Managing Director, Sequoia India, said. He told us this and much more.

The government has decided to raise the use tax on international credit card transactions from 5 per cent to 20 per cent from July with the aim of curbing underreporting by the wealthy. But this has many other implications. Watch this here.


What has Sofen obsessed with these days?

As the resumes go, Nandan Nilekani will be hard to beat. Co-founder of Narayan Murthy at Infosys. Productive stint as Chief Information Technology Officer. The man behind Aadhaar. Revolutionize digital payments with UPI. There is the minor issue of losing the Lok Sabha elections in 2014, but that may seem like a ghar considering Manmohan Singh also lost one in 1999.

Nilekani is now on the verge of reforming e-commerce with its Open Digital Trade Network. A government-backed not-for-profit, ONDC aims to democratize e-commerce by moving it from a platform-centric model to an open network. Buyers can take advantage of it by using any participating app to search for an item and connect with thousands of sellers across the country, as ONDC acts as a facilitation platform without being an app.

The first sign of trouble Ordered food delivery came online as social media was flooded with messages that ordering the same food costs less on ONDC than on Zomato or Swiggy, the duopoly that now rules the business. The first, Listed, has seen its share price drop due to the perceived threat from ONDC.

a Bloomberg column He said that ONDC was working to democratize burgers and biryani and asked some research questions.

our release On this subject he raised questions of his own. It said the lower-than-expected signs of attraction could be due to the fact that Paytm may drop its 3 percent commission as an app purchase to spark customer engagement. Also, inviting large players in the trade to join the platform runs counter to the original intention of facilitating small retail trade. The focal point is whether ONDC is the “UPI moment” for Indian e-commerce, as expected.

This, as the cliché goes, remains to be seen. Meanwhile, it’s a dog-eating world out there.

This is Suveen’s signature. Please send comments, news or opinions on anything – from electric cars to dog food – to [email protected].


(Suveen Sinha is Chief Content Editor at Business Standard)