From India's ONDC bet to the diminishing wealth of UHNIs, here are our most-read stories of the week

Wolves of Dalal Street, Spinny as the dark horse of the used-car market, Sunny Leone at Cannes Film Festival are some of the stories that piqued the interest of our readers this week

By Forbes India

Published: May 27, 2023 10:24:07 AM IST

Updated: Jun 16, 2023 05:53:58 PM IST

Image: Shutterstock

1) India's next big bet

The ecommerce sector may have got a much-needed boom thanks to the pandemic, but not a lot is spoken about its meagre penetration at five to seven percent. India may be on the e-bandwagon, but Bharat is still not reaping the benefits of digital platforms. Open Network for Digital Commerce or ONDC is looking to bring in that 93 to 95 percent of the country that has never purchased anything online. T Koshy, CEO of ONDC, says that they are going after the undigitised population and aim to improve the ecommerce penetration to 25 percent in the next two years. This is not a new claim. Ecommerce giants Amazon, Walmart-owned Flipkart have invested billions, ploughed through the nation to bring more people into the fold. Then what is ONDC doing differently? Will this change consumers as UPI did? Let's find out. Read more

2) Sharks of the Indian bourses

Portfolios of ultra-high net worth individuals (UHNI) in India have, in the past, weathered steep inflation, a long unwinding cycle of interest rates, abrupt geo-political factors wrecking capital markets and a global financial crisis with an anticipated recession. They remained persistent even when unprecedented changes and behavioural bias forced investors to pivot last year. Forbes India's analysis of these super-rich investors shows that some masters of the game remained on the field even when overall markets were barrelling downwards. If we look at the combined portfolio of these wolves of Dalal Street, they appear to have combined holdings of more than Rs250 crore as on March 2023. From Radhakishan Damani of Avenue Supermart to Kamla Vachani of Dixon Technologies, here are some of the big sharks of the Indian stock markets. Read more

3) Dark horse

Niraj Singh's first venture was Locus Education. But by February 2011 he had to shut shop. His second attempt at starting a venture failed in December 2014. Then there was another attempt in 2015, and a venture capitalist told Singh point blank: "Don't be stupid enough to do what even stupids won’t do." Singh still went ahead and joined the overcrowded used-car market space in India. The venture is called Spinny. Singh’s urge to get into the used car market was to solve the pathetic consumer experience and lack of trust in buying such cars. The passion only brought Singh and Spinny stunted growth after the first two years. We are in 2023, and Spinny's pivots have made it a dark horse in the race to win this saturated market. How did Singh do it? Here's the story—from formation lap to podium. Read more

Discover

1) Forbes India To The Point

For over five decades, Srichand Hinduja, and his three younger brothers, Gopichand, Prakash and Ashok, built up an empire—almost equivalent to the GDP of Mongolia—cutting their teeth across continents, hobnobbing with politicians, film stars, and royalty. All through that time, the brothers painted a unified front, often comparing themselves to the righteous brothers of the Ramayana, with different bodies but one soul. But soon the family feud became tabloid fodder. After the death of family patriarch SP Hinduja last week, several questions arise about the family's path ahead. What can we expect to happen next, and who takes charge? To understand the new possibilities, listen to this episode of our new podcast series To The Point. Listen here

2) Sunny Leone at Cannes 2023

It would not be incorrect if we said that Anurag Kashyap is a Cannes film festival veteran. His first appearance at the festival was as a producer of Vikramaditya Motwane's film Udaan in 2010. The film was screened under the Un Certain Regard category. The film he is best recognised for--Gangs of Wasseypur--was screened under Cannes Director's Fortnight in 2012. Then he took Bombay Talkies--an anthology film celebrating 100 years of Indian cinema--to the French Riviera in 2013. The same year, he also had his film Ugly screened under Director's Fortnight. As a producer, he brought 'Masaan' to the French side in 2015. In 2016, he brought Raman Raghav 2.0 once again under the same section of the festival. This year, his film 'Kennedy' was once again part of the Director's Fortnight category. But for his actor Sunny Leone, all of this is brand new. In this conversation with Meenakshi Shedde, Jury Member, Cannes Film Festival’s Semaine de la Critique/CriticsWeek May 2023, the actor talks about redefining her identity and living her dream, overcoming nasty critics, and Anurag Kashyap's Kennedy, the movie that could be career-defining for her. Watch here

3) Why do airlines fail?

Go First recently became the latest airline in India's aviation history to come to a grinding halt. Consider how several airlines have entered what could be called India's airline graveyard. In the post-liberalisation 1990s Damania Airways, East-West Airlines, ModiLuft, the Khemka family-owned NEPC and the government-owned Vayudoot went out of business. In the early 2000s Air Sahara, Air Deccan and Chennai-based Paramount Airways collapsed. And in the last decade, we've seen Kingfisher, Air Costa and Jet Airways go bankrupt. If air travel is such a vital service, why do high-profile airlines keep failing? Here are a few answers. Watch here

4) Money matters

If you read about the sharks of the Indian stock market at the top of this newsletter, here's a little analysis of why not all ultra-high net worth individuals (UHNI) were so lucky with their investment decisions. The number of UHNIs in the world had gone up in 2021 despite the pandemic. But a couple of reasons for this rise was the era of ultra-loose interest rates and relatively benign geopolitics. After the Ukraine-Russia war and stricter monetary policies across the globe UHNIs are feeling the heat. Total wealth held by UHNIs fell by 10 percent in 2022. The recently published Knight Frank Wealth Report highlights the state of UHNIs in today's economic scenario. Here's a little breakdown of the numbers. Watch here