Best of the Week | Good onam sadhyas and better journalism

India is a melange of cultures. We're divided by states (and their GSTs) — and our meals.

Everyone's comfort as well as celebratory meal is different. Last weekend, people from Kerala celebrated Onam. While I haven't read up on why the festival is celebrated, I do know that the food served during Onam is special.

Mint's banking correspondent Gopika Gopakumar hails from Kerala. She wanted to celebrate this festival with the rest of our office in Bombay, and organised a hefty meal in the office for all to participate in.

Along with the food, we also got an education in understanding the order of the servings. I enjoyed my fair share of thoran, avial, and payasam (two different kinds!), as did my colleagues.

Everyone had a different palate, but we could appreciate the food and Gopika's efforts to make this happen. Whether anyone in the bureau was able to file a copy after consuming this meal is a different question altogether.

Resenting the implication, our newsroom remained in top form this week — fuelled by some regional delicacies. Here are some choice selections from the week gone by:

🥊 Family businesses are usually well-oiled machines, as there is a clear hierarchy and established workflows. But when it comes to succession, things get murky. That's exactly what happened with Bharat Forge and its promoter family. A dispute between the MD Baba Kalyani and his sister Sugandha Hiremath has ended up in court, after the brother refused to transfer shares in another pharma company. Now, a new court affidavit has come to light that might rule the verdict in favour of Sugandha. Priyanka Gawande and Anirudh Laskar report that this affidavit goes against the claims made by Baba Kalyani, who has allegedly diverted significant assets away from his father.

🩺 The government will now provide health cover worth ₹5 lakh to all citizens aged 70 and above. This would benefit around 60 million people. The central government has brought these senior citizens under the Ayushman Bharat scheme. While this is a big move (and one in the right direction), the track record of the scheme hasn't been great so far. Nandita Venkatesan writes that there is a gross underutilisation of funds, and the settlement ratios are also only going down. Serving the underserved was the primary aim of Ayushman Bharat, and it's fair to say it hasn't really achieved that.

📿 Heard of faith-tech? It's a new area for startups that concerns itself with areas of religion, astrology, and spirituality. Such apps have recently started to do quite well, after connecting users to gurus in a jiffy. One of the founders of such an app told Samiksha Goel that the total target audience for faith-tech apps is as much as that of food delivery apps—everyone who has a stomach to feed, might also have a god to pray to.

🚺 That's not the only sector that's emerged in the recent past: we also have femtech. So much of our history and research has been written through the lens of men, so it's not surprising that half our population doesn't feel heard. For example, an old adage says that you need eight hours of sleep a night. But women need a bit more. Aditi Sarawagi and Mahalakshmi Prabhakaran write about the rise of femtech startups that cater specifically to women's issues, ranging from tiredness to fertility. 

🛒 The Adani Group is on a shopping spree. The budget? Around $7 billion. Anirudh Laskar reports that this amount would be spread around the cement, airports, defence, ports, and consumer goods. The deals are supposed to be concluded in the current financial year itself. The conglomerate has completed more than 60 acquisitions in recent years, but slowed after the Hindenburg Research reports published in early 2023. Anirudh notes that since the company was founded three decades ago, it hasn't ever pursued such an aggressive expansion plan.

⌛️ The death of a young executive from consulting firm EY has raised a lot of questions on the work culture in the corporate sector. Devina Sengupta writes that this business model is heavily dependent on utilising the large headcounts at the Big Four audit firms, a practice that results in 16-hour days. Weekends are spent strategising the next pitch. The Big Four firms—EY, KPMG, PwC, and Deloitte—are seeing an ever-growing number of young professionals who line up during placement season, but quit within a few years.

🤑 Millions of investors are trying to make a small fortune in IPOs. Every new listing, irrespective of its size, is oversubscribed dozens of times at least. Why? Because of like Bajaj Housing Finance, which doubled when it debuted on Dalal Street on Monday. Listing day gains aren't a new concept, but it's incredibly difficult to secure an allotment for a new IPO. Sashind Ningthoukhongjam writes about strategies one could adopt if they want better chances at securing allotment. You can apply via the shareholder quota, or the small high net investor quota as well. This is a good read for you if you've missed out on some of this year's blockbuster IPOs.

📊 If you did miss Bajaj Housing's IPO boat, not all hope is lost. Niti Kiran and Mayur Bhalerao found that a year after an IPO is a good time to get maximum gains. They analysed the stock exchange performance of companies that had their IPOs in 2021 a patient approach to investing can yield good returns even with IPOs.

🛵 Another recent sought-after IPO was that of Ola Electric. The electric scooter-maker dominates its segment, but its products run into problems often. Alisha Sachdev reports that the company is receiving around 80,000 complaints a month. To tackle that problem, it is building a new service team as thousands of complaints pile up every day. Alisha spoke with owners who have seen their scooters languish at the service centres for months on end, without any resolution in sight. As a result, the company's scooters are also selling less of late.

☕️ There are many places in India where you can get speciality coffee. While Starbucks popularised the coffee chain model in the US, sales have dwindled there as well as in its next biggest market, China. In India, Starbucks faces stiff competition from players like Cafe Coffee Day and Barista, as well as new-age players like Blue Tokai and Third Wave. Every single competitor prices their products cheaper than Starbucks. Despite having more than 450 stores, Starbucks is failing in India to the aforementioned rivals, write Suneera Tandon and Varuni Khosla. Will the Seattle-based company wake up and smell the coffee?

That's all from me this week. If you have any feedback, please write to shashwat.mohanty@htdigital.in.

Best,

Shashwat Mohanty

Assistant Editor