Good morning! They say trust is a two-way street. Not if you’re a Google Maps user though. According to Mint, an SUV driver found this out the hard way. On their way out of Gudalur, a hill town located at the tri-junction of Kerala, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu, the driver found their car stuck on a steep set of stairs. That was apparently the result of using the ‘fastest route’ option and blindly following the app. Thankfully, no harm was done except for scarring the users of Google Maps. Oh well. 

Roshni Nair and Soumya Gupta also contributed to today’s edition.

The Market Signal 

Stocks & Economy: Big economies of the world—the US, China, India, Brazil, and even Russia—are performing surprisingly better than what is apparent, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The world economy, hence, is headed for a soft landing, the IMF said in its economic outlook, which forecast global GDP would grow at 3.1% in 2024.

US shares took a tumble on Tuesday after hot technology companies tempered their projections. Chipmaker AMD has forecast weaker revenue going ahead despite an uptick in its AI processor business. Google parent Alphabet produced a strong show in the December quarter but analysts were still disappointed with slowing search advertisement business. Microsoft exceeded expectations as the integration of artificial intelligence into its business took root. 

Asian stocks began the day in red territory. The GIFT Nifty indicated a slow start to Indian equities too. Investors are awaiting the interim Budget on Feb 1.

TELECOM

Those Jio Phones Are Damp Squibs

Reliance Jio needs a mandatory upgrade. It has asked the government to scrap 2G and 3G altogether to save telcos the cost of maintaining these networks.

Covering up failure: Its ₹4,499 (~$54.12) device-and-data crossover bundle was its first failed attempt to shift feature phone users to smartphones. The $12 Jio Bharat phone was the next hook for the 250 million users on 2G networks. They didn’t bite that either. 

It now wants the government to subsidise users who want to switch out their feature phones for a 5G-enabled smartphone. 

Reliance Jio is lagging rival Airtel in adding premium 4G and 5G subscribers, latest data from regulator TRAI shows. Last November, 3.98 million 4G/5G users joined Airtel versus Jio which added 3.45 million. Struggling telco Vodafone-Idea added only 960,000 4G users and lost subscribers overall. 

WORK

The Long March

Not to be dramatic, but that’s what the work commute feels like. Don’t believe us? Here’s the data: as per research from office commute platform MoveInSync, Indians spent roughly 59 minutes to travel 20 km one way to work last year. This average time and distance to commute has increased 15% after the pandemic. 

Macro picture: Indian employees tend to spend 8% of their time commuting. Amongst Indian metros, the National Capital Region fares the worst with an average time and distance of 64 minutes and 25 km. The massive infrastructure-building spree in our metros is a key reason behind this.

But…: Indians are moving farther from their workplaces. As rents outpace the growth in salaries, more workers are forced to shift to affordable suburbs. 

Solution?: Hybrid or remote work obviously, but that comes at the peril of first in the line of firings. Case in point, IBM.

GEOPOLITICS

Clear And Present Danger

The world is on the brink of a dangerous eruption in violence that could set back economic, social and political progress by decades, and even endanger the global financial system at the centre of which is the US government. 

Patient offensive: Much rests on the United States, the dominant superpower, which wants to avenge the loss of three troops stationed at the trijunction of Iraq, Syria, and Jordan in a weekend drone attack. Secretary of state Anthony Blinken calls the situation the most dangerous in half a century. 

Washington wants vengeful but limited retaliation to contain escalation. That’s a hard act to pull off in war, especially in one where the main actors are state-backed but shadowy autonomous militias spread out in several countries. 

Commando action: Israeli commandos, meanwhile, conducted a dramatic Fauda-style raid in a Gaza hospital. 

The Signal

Deeper US military entanglement in West Asia does not bode well for anyone, least of all the US itself. War is costly and the US, which is struggling to keep together an increasingly fragile democracy and skyrocketing government debt, will push itself onto a precipice. JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon says Washington faces a global market “rebellion” because of mounting debt—$34.14 trillion and rising like a hockey stick. Dimon cautioned that world security is at risk and that the US government cannot fight domestic and international markets. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of Black Swan, says the US is in a “death spiral”. 

🎧 Joe Biden’s Iran dilemma. Also in today’s edition: employed Indians spend roughly two hours commuting on days they work from the office. Tune in to The Signal Daily on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 

TECH

Another Deal Bites The Dust

The company behind the brand synonymous with robot vacuum cleaners (RVCs) is in trouble. iRobot, maker of the Roomba, is laying off 350 employees after its deal to be acquired by Amazon fell through.

Amazon vs. regulators: Amazon, which makes the Astro—an RVC that’s more innovative, yet failed to take the world by storm—announced its bid to buy iRobot for $1.7 billion in 2022. That purchase price decreased to $1.4 billion after US and EU regulators raised concerns about privacy and anti-competitive practices by Amazon. The deal got delayed, and iRobot experienced financial headwinds to the point of executing two rounds of layoffs before the latest one.

iRobot CEO Colin Angle resigned after the European Commission’s just-released statement on Amazon’s dual role as “platform operator and market participant”. The Wall Street Journal has lambasted the regulatory scrutiny as benefiting cheaper RVCs manufactured by Chinese companies.

AUTO

Out With The New, In With The Old

In yet another sign of the big chill for electric vehicles (EVs), legacy automobile companies reported increases in global sales in 2023, with Toyota staying put as the world’s top carmaker. It sold a record 11.2 million cars, up 7.2% from 2022. Honda and Nissan too reported an 8.2% and 6% year-on-year increase in global output, respectively. Ditto Volkswagen, which, like its German peers, has been contending with a changing landscape; its deliveries were up by 12% in 2023.

This is despite the China market shrinking for legacy auto companies—all thanks to demand in the EU and North America. Earlier this month, Toyota chairman Akio Toyoda said that EVs would account for 30% of the car market at most. The company had rationalised EV targets citing muted demand and supply.

Related: French carmaker Renault has cancelled the IPO for EV unit Ampere due to “equity market conditions”.

FYI

Overtaken: Tata Motors has pipped Maruti Suzuki (MS) to become India’s most valuable passenger carmaker in terms of market cap (₹3.24 lakh crore or ~$39 billion vs. MS’ ₹3.15 lakh crore).

Wait and watch: The IMF has revised its growth forecast for India from 6.3% to 6.5% in FY25, still below the finance ministry’s projection of 7% for the same period.

First Sharif, then Musharraf, now…: A Pakistan court sentenced the country’s former PM Imran Khan to 10 years in jail after finding him guilty of violating national secrecy laws; Pakistan goes to the polls on February 8.

Pink slips: US-based logistics giant UPS is planning to axe 12,000 jobs after the company reported a slowdown in delivery volumes in the last quarter of 2023.

No will do: Italian data protection authority Garante, which banned OpenAI’s ChatGPT last year and launched an investigation, has found that the AI chatbot violates privacy rules.

That’s no salary: A Delaware judge has said Tesla chief Elon Musk cannot have a $55 billion pay package after a shareholder challenged it as excessive.

Not dead yet: Meta’s Twitter/X rival Threads tripled its month-over-month downloads in December 2023, according to data by App intelligence firm Appfigures; X, on the other hand, has slipped in app download rankings on both Google Play and the App Store.

THE DAILY DIGIT

1,499

The number of consultants from external agencies, including EY, PwC, Deloitte and KPMG, that 44 government departments employ at an annual cost of ₹302 crore (~$36 million). (Bloomberg) 

FWIW

BFF: Marajó Island, where the Amazon River meets the Atlantic, is a sleepy town in Brazil known for its water buffaloes. The water buffaloes, of the Carabao breed, are part of every aspect of the town’s lives. They’re used for their meat, milk and strength, top uses being taxis, garbage trucks, delivery vans and… police patrols. Yes, buffaloes are the official wagon of choice for the military police stationed in Marajó. The cops seem to like it too; they’re trained to take care of their buffaloes, as they only obey their keepers. Caring for buffaloes involves cleaning them with coconut soap, deworming and hand feeding them mangoes. Such is the effect that stealing on this island has become a moo point. 

Great Scott: Everyday, science takes us ever closer to a better understanding of our world. This time around, it takes us into the world of great white sharks. Wildlife filmmaker Carlos Gauna and doctoral student Phillip Sternes have recorded the first ever video of a newborn great white shark in the wild. The 5-foot-long white shark was spotted off the coast of California. It’s a major discovery because the reproductive cycle of white sharks is a great mystery for scientists. So far, science speculates that white sharks are born in a group of 8-12 and in the deep sea. But this discovery, of a single newborn and in shallow waters, seeks to upend that belief. Jaws-dropping.  

Bad news: Researchers have confirmed a much-dreaded hypothesis of the medical world; Alzheimer’s disease can be ‘transmitted’ from person to person through some surgical procedures. But that also does not mean that it’s contagious. Confused? Hold up then. The researchers studied the bodies of eight people from the UK who were given growth hormones and suffered early death. Some of them died due to bleeding in the brain, a precursor to Alzheimer’s disease. The rest developed behavioural signs of early-onset dementia. This is the ‘transmissible’ part of the claim. As for why it's not contagious, that’s because the treatment of growth hormones doesn’t exist anymore. Eh, you win some, you lose some.