Apple snubs Trump once again, inks big deal with Ratan Tata's company for...., deal is worth Rs...
Apple snubs Trump once again, inks big deal with Ratan Tata's company for...., deal is worth Rs...
US President Donald Trump has been making constant efforts to pull the iPhone business out of India. He first warned Apple CEO Tim Cook, then threatened that if he continued manufacturing iPhones in India, he would have to face a 25 percent tariff.
However, it does not seem that Trump's threats will have any effect on Apple. Instead of stopping its production in India, Apple has taken one more step towards expanding its business. Apple has made a big deal with Tata Group for repairs. Now Tata will take the responsibility of repairing Apple's iPhones and MacBooks. It has made this partnership with Tata to speed up the supply chain and reduce dependence on China.
However, this is not Apple's first deal with Tata. Even before this, Tata has been a key supplier of Apple, which is associated with iPhone assembly. Tata is emerging as a big name in the smartphone supply chain. Till now, Taiwanese companies like Foxconn have dominated this field. Tata Electronics assembles iPhones in Hosur, Tamil Nadu.
In the last financial year, the company has manufactured iPhones worth about $22 billion here, which is a massive increase of 60% compared to last year.
This growth is an indication that Apple is rapidly increasing its production in India. India is the second largest smartphone market in the world. According to a report by Counterpoint Research, 11 million iPhones were sold in India last year, which is 7 percent of the smartphone market in India. It is not easy for Apple to leave such a market.
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Mint
24 minutes ago
- Mint
How John Matthai became a leading light of economic policy in independent India
The biographer is a bit like the cat burglar, stealthily climbing up the scaffolding of a person's life, breaking in, surveying the assortment of riches and then leaving with only a few select, precious elements. This sounds easier on paper than in practice. The biographer starts his or her undertaking with an inherent handicap, given the limited access to a subject's life (especially if the subject is long deceased), and is forced to temper vaulting ambition with discretion. It is in the choice of things the author focuses on—the life lived and the circumstances surrounding that life—that determines what makes for a good biography. What finally makes a biography truly stand out is the craft of storytelling, transforming the tedium of chronology into a compelling narrative. Bakhtiar K. Dadabhoy's biography of John Matthai, Honest John, is an object study of how an author has to perform an intricate balancing act between the different elements of a subject's life: unspooling the various milestones, his professional progression, the contexts (economic, social and political) defining his professional choices and, finally, how the interplay between the subject's personal events, or emotional growth, determine some life choices or professional achievements. John Matthai is, admittedly, an interesting choice—independent India's first railways minister and its second finance minister—though charting his life holds myriad challenges and Dadabhoy's courageous enterprise manages to score on some counts but comes up empty on many others. Also reads: My mother, the family's memory-keeper Matthai's life became manifestly fascinating by first moving from the private sector to the government, and then becoming a core member of the policy circle that watched over the transition of India from a colony to an independent republic. Matthai had till then shifted from academia to policymaking before settling down at the Tata Group. As a professor of economics at Madras Presidency College, he was nominated to the Madras legislative council in November 1922, affording him first-hand experience in bridging the distance between theory and practice. This brought him to the notice of the Tata Group which pursued him and convinced him to join. Matthai's work on the Bombay Plan—drafted under the imprimatur of J.R.D. Tata and G.D. Birla, among others—had caught the attention of both Congress party leaders as well as the colonial administration. Matthai's graduation into national-level policymaking happened when he was invited to join the interim government in August 1946. It is here that Matthai bumped up against national politics, preparing him for long debates, contentious arguments and partisan broadsides against his policy choices. Initially approached for the finance portfolio, the political exigency of having to accommodate Muslim League's Liaquat Ali Khan forced Matthai to console himself with the industries and supply portfolio. From here to railway minister during independence, which literally had to transport the horrors of Partition across borders, and finance minister thereafter, Dadabhoy's biography is like a luxury train, affording readers a fleeting view of modern India's economic history as it passes by. Dadabhoy diligently excavates official memoranda, policy briefs, letters, Parliament records and debates to provide a glimpse of how a newly-formed republic, recovering from decades of surplus extraction while grappling with widespread poverty and the after-effects of a devastating communal carnage, was trying to craft a sustainable and equitable policy architecture. Statements from leaders with contesting views provide an interesting dynamic, showcasing some of the moral and ethical dilemmas in constructing a democratic, empathetic and secular republic from scratch. Matthai's biography as a vehicle provides an excellent vantage view. But herein lies the nub. There is a lot going on outside that is covered meticulously and, yet, the tumult and turmoil occurring inside the vehicle goes completely undocumented. This is a large, noticeable gap; Dadabhoy has fastidiously mounted flesh and bones to a skeletal framework but forgotten to add a soul to the end-product. It is this conspicuous omission that robs the biography of meaning. Writing about the art of writing biographies, specifically Lytton Strachey's biography of Queen Victoria, author Virginia Woolf had commented: 'Could not biography produce something of the intensity of poetry, something of the excitement of drama, and yet keep the peculiar virtue that belongs to fact—its suggestive reality, its own proper creativeness?" This 'suggestive reality" is perhaps the secret sauce that could have helped Honest John become a compelling narrative, instead of just an interesting read. For example, close to 100 pages are dedicated to tracing the debates, question-and-answers, budgetary allocations after Matthai joins the interim government and later assumes office as railways minister. It is an informative interlude, providing readers a view of India's modern economic history in the making. But, then, readers come away not any wiser about the dramatis personae, specifically John Matthai, scripting this important chapter in India's history. In the preface to American Prometheus, a biography of scientist Robert Oppenheimer, authors Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin confess that, 'It is a deeply personal biography researched and written in the belief that a person's public behaviour and his policy decisions (and in Oppenheimer's case perhaps even his science) are guided by the private experiences of a lifetime." There are multiple instances in Honest John which cry out for some understanding of Matthai's 'private experiences". The first, and most obvious, missing link in the book is the influence of Achamma Matthai. Apart from a perfunctory mention in the book as John Matthai's wife, Achamma deserved some more exposure. She was one of the early female graduates in India, having graduated with a bachelor of arts degree from St John's Diocesan College, Kolkata, in 1920. The relationship between Achamma and John needed to be explored in more granular detail and not the boilerplate statement, 'It proved to be a happy marriage". Achamma's influence on John Matthai's career trajectory, his professional choices and his moral journey looms over the book like some nebulous spirit, palpable yet undefined. This becomes evident in March 1944, when both John and Achamma are distraught after their daughter Valsa dies under mysterious circumstances in the US. This is soon after the Bombay Plan is announced and two years before Matthai resigns from the Tatas to join the interim government. The interim period is intensely important but Dadabhoy provides little for us to understand Matthai's state of mind, how he manages to tackle the demons or how the tragedy shaped his personality thereafter. In the foreword to the book, Matthai's daughter-in-law Syloo (married to Ravi Matthai) describes the man: 'Daddy was seen as being a formidable person, a man with a serious demeanour and an eminence which many thought precluded intimacy or even small liberties. But, at home, he was an entirely different person." In other words, Matthai, like everybody else, was human with the usual flaws and frailties. Dadabhoy provides a brief glimpse of the man's faultlines by recounting the episode where Matthai seeks Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's intervention after Matthai's son reportedly runs over and kills a pedestrian in Allahabad. This is the only instance when readers catch sight of the great man's feet of clay; Dadabhoy's hands may have been forced here by an earlier book which first recounted the incident. But barring this single incident, there is scarce little to sketch out the man's personality. This shortcoming is perhaps born out of necessity. While Parliamentary records and inter-ministerial archives have become much more accessible, we do not know if Dadabhoy had similar luck with John Matthai's personal documents and letters. Also, to be fair to Dadabhoy, many of the people who knew Matthai personally have all passed on, adding another layer of insurmountable constraints. This biography, therefore, apart from being a valuable document for understanding how some of India's policy contours unfolded in the first decade after independence, adds little to the mystique of John Matthai as one of India's leading post-independent policy architects. The author is a senior journalist and author of Slip, Stitch and Stumble: The Untold Story of India's Financial Sector Reforms. He posts @rajrishisinghal 'Honest John: A Life of John Matthai': By Bakhtiar K. Dadabhoy, Penguin Random House India, 396 pages, ₹999 Also reads: India's growth and urban planning: On different planets
Indian Express
25 minutes ago
- Indian Express
Trump vs Musk: Call the breakup poetic justice. Call it karmic crypto-collapse. Just don't call it surprising
Some alliances hum like clockwork. Others tick like time bombs. This one? It was always a countdown. When two men believe the world revolves around them, it's only a matter of time before their orbits collide. And when they do, the explosion isn't quiet. Rather, it's a full-blown Twitter meltdown with echoes loud enough to rattle both Wall Street and Mar-a-Lago. And boy, we are watching the best cosmic collision since Pluto got downgraded. Welcome to the spectacular implosion of the Trump–Musk bromance. What began as a mutual admiration society of billionaire chest-thumping and red-hat flirting has now devolved into the kind of public breakup even the Real Housewives would find a bit too messy. Let's rewind. Once upon a time, in the golden age of post-truth politics, Elon Musk, the tech messiah, meme lord, and part-time Mars enthusiast, decided to dip his toes into political kingmaking. A neat little $277 million was funnelled into the Donald Trump campaign machinery. In any other part of the world, this would be called oligarchic meddling. In the United States, it's called 'Super Tuesday'. Trump, ever the transactional romantic, reciprocated by giving Musk a cosy seat at the regulatory table named DOGE, where he could quietly dismantle watchdogs, neuter climate policies, and make capitalism great again (for Tesla stock). Love was in the air. Or maybe, it was just the fumes from Musk's Boring Company flamethrowers. But like all ill-fated love stories, this one came with red flags. Musk's reputation, once burnished with visions of space colonies and clean energy, began to crumble under the weight of layoffs, lawsuits, and livestreamed tantrums. Turns out, being the adult in the room is hard when you're too busy rebranding Twitter into an unpronounceable algebra problem. Enter phase two: Reputation rehab. Suddenly, Musk was 'distancing' himself from the Trump administration. He quit councils, tweeted vaguely progressive things, and flirted with the idea of centrism, all while pretending he hadn't spent the past four years quietly enjoying deregulation like a raccoon in a trash buffet. But this Thursday? The façade shattered. In a tweet that will one day be studied in both communications courses and FBI depositions, Musk posted: 'Time to drop the really big bomb: @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files.' He even had the gall to add: 'Have a nice day, DJT!' That wasn't a mic drop. That was a nuke in 280 characters. And let's be honest: If anyone was going to try to cancel someone else using Jeffrey Epstein, it was always likely to be Musk. Trump, unsurprisingly, didn't take it well. His reply was less subtle than a red tie in a wind tunnel: Musk is 'crazy,' and perhaps more worryingly for SpaceX investors, he threatened to cut off government contracts. Suddenly, two men who once shared bromantic photo ops and mutual disdain for accountability were hurling legal threats across a billion-dollar battlefield. Kanye West (of course) tried to play counsellor, tweeting something along the lines of 'bros don't fight, we love you both'. Unfortunately, love is dead and so is Kanye's credibility. And yet… are we really witnessing the final act? Let's not forget: Trump has made up with worse. Just ask Marco 'sweaty little man' Rubio or Ted 'your wife is ugly' Cruz. With Trump, personal insults are just foreplay. It's politics as WWE: Everyone's bleeding, but it's still part of the script. Still, there's something deliciously different this time. This feud doesn't feel like kayfabe. It feels real. Real messy. Real vindictive. Real stupid. And that makes it… kind of beautiful? Because if 2025 is going to be yet another parade of rich men yelling into microphones about how oppressed they are, the least we can ask for is a little entertainment. Preferably the kind that ends in lawsuits and meme wars. So, grab your popcorn. Watch the world's richest man implode on the platform he owns, while being roasted by the guy he helped elect. Call it poetic justice. Call it karmic crypto-collapse. Call it what you will. Just don't call it surprising. After all, in the immortal words of the internet, 'This you?'
Time of India
25 minutes ago
- Time of India
Musk-Trump breakup exposes cracks in Wall Street's meme casino
Live Events Bloomberg You Might Also Like: Musk-Trump breakup puts billions in SpaceX contracts at risk, jolting US space program Bloomberg It took less than a day for the great Donald Trump-Elon Musk split to reshape debates over billionaire power and influence in American another level, the breakup was a reminder of something else: the perils of personality-driven investing, a growing and lucrative business for the Wall Street bankers cranking out, rapid-fire, a never-ending array of new financial products. Few have done more to fuel these gambling spirits than the president and the world's richest a matter of hours, a loosely connected web of Musk-linked trades — and a few tied to Trump — cratered as the public feud escalated. Dogecoin sank 10%; a publicly traded fund dangling SpaceX exploration for retail consumption slid 13%; leveraged bets amping up returns on Musk-related ventures lost a quarter of their value or more. Shares of Trump's media company spat — ignited by the deficit-expanding tax bill threatening Tesla's electric-vehicle subsidies — cooled on Friday and asset valuations steadied. But by then, investors had gotten the message loud and clear. 'You can go from being an incredible beneficiary one moment and then being bludgeoned the next,' said Peter Atwater, founder of Financial Insyghts. 'Anytime you are investing in something that is as crowded as these Elon Musk-related vehicles, you are going to be either the beneficiary or the victim of his standing.'The breakup drama was backdrop to a comparatively sleepy week in regular markets. The S&P 500 ended the week 1.5% higher, while the extended FANG index — which doesn't include Tesla — hit a record. The dollar touched its lowest level in about two years. Ten-year Treasury yields jumped more than 10 basis points this week, as Friday's jobs data eased concerns about an imminent economic for the casino crowd on Thursday, things got ugly. These investors aren't just trading stocks or crypto, they're paying for proximity to dominant personalities. Tesla is a financial avatar for Musk's ambitions. Trump's political resurgence reverberates across his media company, his fast-expanding crypto empire and MAGA-theme products across the broader industry. Each post, endorsement and headline is a chance to pull capital into the retail investment hasn't just drawn in risk junkies — it's built an entire product architecture, from speculative bets to more conventional funds tied to the fortunes of billionaire Musk. Vehicles like Baron Partners Fund and the Ark Innovation ETF got caught up in the selloff before markets rebounded on sharp rout — its worst week since 2023 — was fueled by projections that the company faces a $1 billion hit to full-year profit, if it loses a tax credit from Trump's bill. Meanwhile, the president's businesses pushed deeper into the financial ecosystem. His media company was one step closer to launching the Truth Social Bitcoin ETF, the latest in a string of crypto-linked assets and 'MAGA'-themed investment those with the nerve to dive into the newfangled, the gains have been eye-popping at times. A closed-end fund with Space-X exposure, Destiny Tech100 Inc., surged about 500% in just a month after the Nov. 5 election. Dogecoin went from 15 cents to above 43 cents in November, when Ark surged by 26% in less than two spirits have run high since the pandemic but soared anew after Trump buddied up with Musk on the campaign trail and won the White House, backed by the $250 million the Tesla founder spent on the meme ethos was cemented when Musk's program to cut government spending took its name from a crypto token born as a canine-themed joke.'I put him in the separate category of the Zeus of personality cults, beyond anything that has ever happened,' said Jay Hatfield, CEO of Infrastructure Capital Management. 'We've never had anybody running a major company like him.'The result has been a speculative spasm that, until this week, was often insulated from old-school markets convulsed by Trump's on-again-off-again tariff threats. An element of the craze that infuriates Wall Street's old guard — the near-impossibility of forming a valuation case around things like crypto tokens and public vehicles for private holdings — proved a virtue at a time of rampant economic uncertainty.'Retail traders — the bro trade component of retail — they've never really cared much about fundamentals,' said Dave Mazza, Chief Executive Officer at Roundhill Investments who in February launched a Tesla-focused product. 'These folks really believe in the narrative on stocks like Tesla and Palantir Technologies Inc. Some of these names are really dependent upon a dream premium and not what they actually do for business.'Another case in point: 16% of ETFs launched this year offer single-security strategies that use either leverage or options overlay, according to Bloomberg Intelligence's Athanasios Psarofagis. That's a record. Many target retail investors who trade aggressively, take on higher risk, and use them for dip buying.'The rise of degen leverage and derivative products on the highest profile stocks makes a mockery of the idea that the market is 'allocating capital' in any rational way,' says Dave Nadig, an ETF industry expert. 'It's immensely profitable. That's why very few people are even suggesting there are any issues in ETF land.'
