Good morning! Keeping up with the Kardashians is no easy task. After disrupting the entertainment, beauty, and fashion industries, their next target is… hot sauce! You read that right. Fortune reports that Skky Partners LP, the investment firm led by Kim Kardashian, announced a significant minority stake in Truff. For the uninitiated, Truff makes luxury condiments infused with truffle. Besides condiments, it also makes merchandise like hoodies and spatulas. Apparently, it was Truff’s viral marketing strategy that attracted Kim to the brand. Game recognises game. 🫶

Roshni Nair and Adarsh Singh also contributed to today’s edition.

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The Market Signal 

Stocks & Economy: Indian equities were in choppy waters on Thursday without any trigger one way or the other. The broad market moved up and down but in a narrow range and finally both major indices ended the day marginally lower than their previous close. 

The US markets were closed for Thanksgiving. Asian stocks were largely in the red in morning trade. Japan, however, was buoyant with the country’s inflation gauge speeding up for the first time in four months. Higher inflation is a sign that consumers have begun to spend after a really long period of deflation.  

Morning trades in GIFT Nifty indicate a lower opening for Indian equities. 

A dispute among OPEC+ members over production quotas has kept prices in check. A crucial producers’ meeting scheduled for earlier this week did not happen and will now be held virtually next week. 

ENTERTAINMENT

The Emperor Of Tinsel Town

Indonesians know Punjabi well. No, not the language, but the Indian-origin family that’s dominated Indonesia’s entertainment industry for two generations. 

Manoj Punjabi has been so successful in the films business, his company’s valuation puts him in a rarefied club of producers that includes Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Shares of his firm PT MD Pictures have risen 186% since its last big hit, KKN di Desa Penari, which surpassed Avengers: Infinity War in box office collections last year. 

Soapy start: Punjabi has 110 titles to his credit as producer, and another 11 on the way. Credit to his uncle Raam, with whom he once worked, for this frenetic pace: Raam, known as Indonesia’s ‘Soap King’, churned out hit Indonesian telenovelas in the 1990s.

Diaspora dominance: Indian-origin filmmakers such as M Night Shyamalan, Mira Nair, and Gurinder Chadha have found success worldwide. But for Indonesians, the Punjabi family is their Hollywood. 

AVIATION

More Frills Please

Wider seats, more leg room, and complimentary hot meals on an IndiGo flight—who’d have thunk? That could be a possibility by 2024-end, per The Economic Times. IndiGo will introduce dual-class seating to compete with Air India on international routes.

Details: The carrier reportedly wants to leverage its lower unit cost and offer premium class seating for business and high-end travellers at fares lower than full-service airlines. IndiGo’s incoming Airbus A321 XLR fleet, scheduled to fly in 2025, will also have business class seating and more leg room in economy.

In other news: Go First’s lenders are weighing liquidation after the bankrupt carrier failed to attract final bids for revival. India’s aviation regulator suspended senior official Anil Gill over corruption allegations. US’ United Airlines wants to use passenger information for targeted ads, and Argentinian president Javier Milei is pissing off unionists with his bid to privatise the national carrier.

AUTOMOBILES

Stuck In Low Gear

Used-car sellers hit the fast lane last year and the year before that, when Covid shut down factories and derailed supply chains. Vehicle owners held onto their cars even as dealers’ yards emptied out, driving up prices of almost all models. 

The slump: Startups such as CarDekho, Cars24, Spinny, and CarTrade, which made hay then, are struggling now after new car production returned to normalcy. Although, there is still some lag in certain segments because of erratic chip supply. Several car models are in the slow lane. 

The tweaks: In the past few months, the startups have shifted focus to explore new revenue streams such as insurance sales and vehicle service to improve unit economics following pressure from their investors. A couple have shut down parts of their primary business of selling used cars. 

The Signal

The non-premium segment of the Indian auto market is under twin stresses—cost pressures and transition pangs. Users are reluctant to buy regular vehicles with short residual life. While many first-time consumers, a major chunk of used-car buyers, are likely postponing purchases owing to squeezed household budgets, value- and sustainability-conscious buyers might be delaying upgrades for hybrid or electric vehicles.

About 70% of tier-one consumers in a December 2022 McKinsey survey said their next buy could be a hybrid or EV. The used-car market for EVs, however, is still nascent as supply is not enough and expertise to assess used EVs is still not widely available, especially outside metro cities.

FINANCE

Legacy Of Loss

The funeral is over, condolences offered, and the obituaries penned. But there is still no justice for Subrata Roy’s biggest legacy—his Ponzi schemes that duped investors. 

Around 500,000 Sahara investors, waiting for their refunds, will stage a protest against the government in Delhi next month. They’re worried they’ll never see the money, as the government considers confiscating Sahara assets. 

Gone: Market regulator Sebi has ₹25,000 crore (~$3 billion), which the Sahara Group deposited as refund money. But it has been unable to return most of it to the small, mostly rural savers who lost money to the company’s schemes. Instead, the government may move it all to the Consolidated Fund of India and spend it on welfare schemes. 

In an election year, the government could be tempted to use this ‘windfall’ to roll out vote-winning schemes. Already, a government portal to refund these investors isn't working. 

TECH

One Trick Pony

Gauging from the estimated 50% increase in shipments by the end of 2023, Indians clearly want iPhones. The same can’t be said of other Apple devices.

Spill: Counterpoint analysts reckon that Mac shipments to India will decrease by 15-18% this year. iPad sales may contract by 6-8%, while Apple Watch and AirPods shipments may fall by over 50%.

Why?: High prices of non-iPhone devices and the reluctance to switch from the Windows operating system. The aspirational appeal of the iPhone—easier to convert into sales via easy financing—hasn’t spilled over to the ecosystem. But that could change once the iPhone reaches critical mass.

Enterprise clients prefer cheaper brands too. India’s PC market grew 14% year-on-year as of September 2023. HP, Lenovo, Dell, Asus, and Acer are the top five brands.

The true wireless buds market is dominated by local players. International brands Samsung, JBL, and Infinity are placed fifth.

FYI

Ongoing: Rescue operations to evacuate the 41 workers trapped in the Uttarakhand tunnel collapse were halted on Thursday night due to a technical snag. Drilling will likely resume on Friday.

👀: The World Health Organization requested China for more information on a surge in respiratory illnesses and a pneumonia outbreak in children that’s overwhelming hospitals in the country. Beijing says there’s nothing to worry about.

Less talk, more action: IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw says India will introduce “clear actionable items” to combat deepfakes in 10 days.

Add to cart: Bloomberg reports that TikTok is in talks to invest in Tokopedia, the e-commerce company operated by Indonesian tech major GoTo Group; discussions also involve TikTok and Tokopedia jointly building a new e-commerce platform.

Loophole: Justice Anand Venkatesh of the Madras High Court is urging the Tamil Nadu Government to consider a “Deed of Familial Association” for LGBTQIA+ couples in the state. Doing so would provide queer couples protection from harassment and/or discrimination.

#MeToo redux: Actors Jamie Foxx and Cuba Gooding Jr, music mogul Jimmy Iovine, and Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose are facing lawsuits for alleged sexual abuse; the development comes days after rapper-entrepreneur Diddy settled a rape and abuse suit filed against him by singer Cassie.

Unrest: Riots have broken out in Dublin, Ireland, between anti-immigrant protestors and police after a knife attack that injured five (of which three are children).

THE DAILY DIGIT

$446 billion

The size of the hole in the Chinese real estate sector that needs to be filled to ensure promised apartments are delivered to buyers and the industry is stable. (Bloomberg) 

FWIW

Fax of the matter: Politicians are notoriously difficult to get a hold of once they ascend to the office. The situation is no different in the US, where citizens are running from pillar to post to reach their representatives in order to demand action on the war in Gaza. Having tried email and texting, some are now turning to a 20^th century relic: fax machines. Helping them in this endeavour are websites like FaxZero, which allows anyone to send a fax online without owning a machine. The good old days are back, and how!

AI to the ‘rescue’: The UK Civil Service is in for a major culling, no thanks to AI. UK Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowde plans to form a “hit squad” of 30 technical experts to transform public service. The committee will be armed with an annual budget of about $6 million, with its focus on reforming welfare fraud, asylum claims, and the NHS interface. Interestingly though, AI in public policy doesn’t really have a great track record. Maybe things will be different this time… right? 

Not so private: They say private browsing is a great way to bypass predatory pricing on e-commerce sites. But technically, that might just be a case of a false sense of security. Dynamic pricing is based on a series of factors like timing, location, IP address, etc., which come together to form your digital fingerprint. So even if you log on to your favourite website in private mode, there’s a 99.99% chance that the company knows it’s you. Sad but true.