Normal Guy

New Website :) You can Subscribe here and all the work will be updated here, and it is much easier and faster to access I honestly started this out of curiosity, but now it has become something much bigger. Because of that, I am shifting from this platform to my own website. From both my side and your side, Buy me Coffee site has not been working well. There is high loading time, and from sign-up to taking subscription, the process is very hard. Also, going through Stripe adds extra taxes on both your side and mine. Overall, it’s not worth it, and it wastes your time when the site itself doesn’t work smoothly. I have also received a lot of complaints from members about how difficult it is to read articles here. That problem is now solved, the new platform is much easier and smoother for everyone. For those who have taken a yearly subscription - from my side, out of courtesy, you will get 1 year subscription on the new website. I will send you a coupon code via email. For those who have taken a monthly subscription, you will get 1 month subscription there. You can simply sign up and use the promocode. A few articles are already live, and all old articles will be available within the next 2 days. Thank you for your patience, everyone. Now shift to the new website, it is much easier to navigate. Website: normalguy.co.in Yearly subscribers will receive an email from me with their dedicated promocode. Monthly subscribers, read this - buymeacoffee.com/normal_2610/mo…

FedEx dropped 7.4% and UPS dropped 8.9% within hours of this announcement That tells you the market understands what just happened. Amazon runs 80,000 trailers, 24,000 intermodal containers, and 100 aircraft. That entire fleet was paid for by Prime fees and seller commissions over three decades. The cost of building this from scratch is now sunk. Every new ASCS customer is near-pure margin on top of existing capacity. FedEx and UPS have to price their networks to cover their build cost. Amazon does not. That is the gap. P&G and 3M are not small sellers who need help with shipping. These are companies with their own global supply chains. They signed up anyway. That tells you Amazon AI demand forecasting and inventory placement tools are the draw, not just trucks and warehouses. Every company that plugs into ASCS feeds Amazon real-time data on what is moving, where, and how fast, across categories Amazon may not even sell in yet. Amazon gets category intelligence from its own customers' supply chains. That is a data flywheel no logistics company can match. Amazon spent years as the biggest customer for both UPS and FedEx. During that time, it learned their cost structures, their route density math, and their margin thresholds. Then it built its own network and started pulling volume away. UPS already cut Amazon as its largest customer recently. Now Amazon is going after the rest of UPS and FedEx's client base using infrastructure those same carriers helped deliver packages to build. The companies that trained Amazon logistics muscles are now competing against the finished product. That sequence is hard to reverse. Now Those who follow me should read my old post on X on what Amazon doing in Robotics, How they cut significant cost i post on that in past with regard to AWS + AI JV with CPU cluster and Agentic + Chip value chain Amazon slowly know how to handle the gear in tough road, this is the power of capital intensive capex heavy driven with focused R&D approach without paying much dividend like Indian businesses Well this is the Age of Decentralization & Startup

Chhattisgarh sits on 20% of India iron ore and ships most of it through Vizag port, 597 km away on broken two-lane roads. That same trip on this expressway drops to 464 km and half the time. Every hour saved on a mineral truck is money saved on the landed cost of steel. India logistics cost just fell below 8% of GDP for the first time, down from 14% a few years ago. But in real term i think it still 9 to 12%. Expressways like this one are doing the heavy lifting behind that number. Cheaper freight means cheaper manufacturing, and that shows up in export pricing. This corridor cuts through Dandakaranya and the Eastern Ghats, some of India poorest tribal districts in Odisha and Chhattisgarh. ₹10,000 crore of the ₹16,500 crore budget is being spent inside Odisha alone. A six-lane road through Koraput and Kondagaon does not just move goods. It moves people from low-income pockets to industrial zones around Vizag and Raipur. Manufacturing clusters need steady Supply Chain of everything India manufacturing push has a timing problem. Factories need power, roads, ports, and rail from the day they open, not five years later. This expressway was proposed in 2014, approved in 2017, and construction started only in late 2022. It is now expected to finish by December 2026. That is 12 years from idea to road. China builds corridors like this in three. India capital expenditure on infra is at record highs, but the execution cycle still drags. Well, India disappoint both optimist & Pessimist

Never Ignore Market share gains of any particular company :) Ather doubled its dealership count from 351 to 700 in one year. That single move drove most of the 69% volume jump to 2.63 lakh units. Central India share went from 9.5% to 17.3% once stores showed up there. Most EV startups treat distribution as a second step after the product works. Ather flipped that, well thanks to OLA - Rizta gave them a product for every family buyer, and 700 stores gave every family buyer a place to walk in. Volume follows physical access, not brand awareness alone. Ola Electric held 40% of the e-scooter market two years ago. That number is 4.6% now. Ather went from 12% to 18.6% over the same window. Same macro, same subsidies, same charging gaps. The difference is after-sales. Ola broke trust with spare part shortages and service delays. Ather scaled 548 service centres alongside its retail push. In two-wheelers, the buyer's second experience with the brand matters more than the first. Retention built Ather share. Churn destroyed Ola Ather cut cost of goods per unit by 9% while pushing volume up 69%. That combination shows up in the gross margin, adjusted gross margin jumped 116% to ₹925 crore. EBITDA margin went from roughly negative 23% to negative 6.7% over the full year. The company is not burning less by selling less. It is burning less while selling a lot more. At 2.63 lakh units, fixed costs get spread thin enough that each next quarter brings the breakeven line closer without needing price hikes.

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New Website :) You can Subscribe here and all the work will be updated here, and it is much easier and faster to access I honestly started this out of curiosity, but now it has become something much bigger. Because of that, I am shifting from this platform to my own website. From both my side and your side, Buy me Coffee site has not been working well. There is high loading time, and from sign-up to taking subscription, the process is very hard. Also, going through Stripe adds extra taxes on both your side and mine. Overall, it’s not worth it, and it wastes your time when the site itself doesn’t work smoothly. I have also received a lot of complaints from members about how difficult it is to read articles here. That problem is now solved, the new platform is much easier and smoother for everyone. For those who have taken a yearly subscription - from my side, out of courtesy, you will get 1 year subscription on the new website. I will send you a coupon code via email. For those who have taken a monthly subscription, you will get 1 month subscription there. You can simply sign up and use the promocode. A few articles are already live, and all old articles will be available within the next 2 days. Thank you for your patience, everyone. Now shift to the new website, it is much easier to navigate. Website: normalguy.co.in Yearly subscribers will receive an email from me with their dedicated promocode. Monthly subscribers, read this - buymeacoffee.com/normal_2610/mo…

Market Outlook of this Week :) normalguy.co.in/post/market-ou…

@Finstor85 Interesting Article, Let me go through it, will share my thoughts soon

@Normal_2610 Some perspective into frontier IT players Vs. Midcaps: open.substack.com/pub/finstor85/… would love your thoughts.

Infosys part of the IT industry hiring freeze with 7,000 employees cut in FY26 due to revenue-headcount disconnect. Nilekani confirmed no leadership transition planned. CEO Salil Parekh said it's too early to assess impact of Anthropic Mythos model on IT services. Ruled out layoffs and plans to hire 20,000 fresh graduates, with AI contributing about 5.5% of revenue. Large deal wins grew 20% to $14.9 billion, focusing on profitability over volume. Secured a $500 million+ contract from Truist Financial for a GCC in Hyderabad, largest such deal for an IT firm. Trimmed growth guidance after passing on a deal with a major European manufacturer, prioritizing margins.

@therealsid5 Not at all but if this work out lot of chain will be benefitted

@Normal_2610 Can this reduce natural gas imports from West Asia to a good extent?

@StealthWealth_ @SwarajyaMag Did talk yesterday in idealist

@SwarajyaMag @Normal_2610

⚡ Government reportedly planning ₹37,500 crore incentive scheme for coal gasification projects ⛽ Aims to convert domestic coal into fuels and chemicals to reduce import dependence 📊 Targets 100 million tonnes gasification capacity by 2030 swarajyamag.com/infrastructure…

@oprd24 Read the full blog by Kyle chan and also read its sources what he used

@Normal_2610 Good post man. Appreciated Is there any way I can read entire plan sets from 5th plan to uptil today? I think I need to tell my elder bro to setup a "China studies" Institute in Bangalore.

China put new materials into its 5-year plans starting in the early 1990s, That is over 30 years of continuous state-backed investment. Today they control 91% of rare earth refining, 94% of permanent magnet output, and dominate SiC, GaN, lithium batteries, and solar-grade silicon. Everyone else woke up to this around 2023 when export controls started biting, US now has exactly one rare earth magnet maker. Europe got fewer than a quarter of its license applications approved by Beijing. 30 years vs 5 years of catch-up, That gap doesn't close fast at all New materials sounds like a boring academic label nobody would care about, That is the whole point. It is the upstream layer that controls every downstream industry people do care about. EVs need rare earth magnets - China makes 94% of them. Advanced chips need SiC and GaN wafers - China leads there too. Solar panels need high-purity silicon and special alloys. Defense systems need carbon fiber. By quietly owning the materials layer for 3 decades, China built the chokepoint for every other country next-generation products. The boring stuff turned out to be everything. Look at the sequence in that chart. China didn't try everything at once. Biotech and aerospace went into the 7th plan in 1986. Semiconductors and materials came in the 8th plan in 1991. Robotics and EVs showed up around 2011. Quantum got added in 2021. Each layer feeds the next - you can't do advanced chips without materials, can't do EVs without batteries and magnets. This is industrial policy built as a stack, where each 5-year cycle adds capacity that the next one depends on. Not a wish list. A build order. This whole chart traces back to a letter 4 Chinese scientists wrote to Deng Xiaoping in March 1986. He approved it in two days. That became the 863 Program - 10 billion RMB upfront, covering biotech, new materials, automation, and energy. It ran for 30 years across multiple leadership changes before merging into a bigger national R&D program in 2016. Over 40,000 researchers, 5,200 projects, 30,000 patents. Most countries write strategy documents that get forgotten after elections. China wrote a build order and funded it for 4 decades without a gap. If yu are Love Politics & Deep Expertise on China then only Yu will Understand Why China didn't fail :) India has the world 5th largest rare earth reserves but still imports 80-90% of its magnets and processed materials from China. We launched the National Critical Minerals Mission only in January 2025 with ₹16,300 crore. China started putting new materials into five-year plans in 1986, that's a 39-year head start on the same supply chain. India has the geology. What we don't have is 4 decades of refining, processing, and manufacturing investment stacked on top of each other. Reserves in the ground mean nothing without the processing chain above it. New materials is the root of every other row on that chart. You can't make EVs without lithium batteries and rare earth magnets. You can't make advanced chips without SiC and GaN wafers. You can't do aerospace without carbon fiber and special alloys. You can't do quantum without high-purity optics. China didn't invest in materials alongside other sectors, materials was the layer that made all of them possible. That's why it shows up so early in the timeline. Own the inputs, and you decide who gets to build what. Other Nation Only Achieve if they do Multiple Partnership and JV with targeted Timeline not just MOU to show off :)

Mahindra should give Dividend more :) PV-only exports for FY2026 were 18,722 units, up 18.9% YoY, giving Mahindra a 2.1% share of India's total PV exports. The rest of the 40,990 came from CV and 3W exports. CY2025 total exports (Jan-Dec 2025) were 27,531 units vs 26,153 in CY2024 - modest 5% growth on a calendar year basis. Top export model - The XUV300/3XO was the key export driver with 13,946 units in FY2026, up 70.3% YoY. RushLane Key export markets based on shipment data - Peru, South Africa, and Nepal are the top destinations for Mahindra vehicles globally. Tractor exports (separate from auto) - FY2026 tractor exports were 20,473 units, up 17% YoY. April 2026 tractor exports were 2,007 units (+30%).

Mahindra became the top EV revenue player in FY26 with Rs 15,089 crore revenue, a massive 344% year-on-year growth. Also completed acquisition of additional 28.03% stake in Carnot Technologies

@aryansss2718 @1shankarsharma Kids only Show Power in Home, they are not even teen

@1shankarsharma @Normal_2610 What’s this then

@Vivek_Jain5 @1shankarsharma Yup Absolutely

@1shankarsharma @Normal_2610 Sharma ji, even Indians wouldn't buy it if we hadn't gatekeep Byd and other Chinese manufacturers.

@1shankarsharma They are addicted to father (GOI) love, those who pampered all the life, Only create lobby

@Normal_2610 And yet, I can't buy it in Dubai Nepalis can't buy in Nepal All domestic flat pitch bullies. Not confident enough to face the world

Adani Kutch copper plant faced significant technical setbacks - produced only 94,000 tons in 10 months and closed for repairs. Uranium in the mix! This is rare and surprising for a new plant. It adds extra safety headaches that most people do not expect in copper smelting. Kutch Copper is a huge new factory in Gujarat that can make 500,000 tonnes of pure copper every year. It started about 10 months ago. But right now, it is not running well at all. Global copper market is tight right now (mines are not producing enough clean concentrate, China is buying a lot). Kutch entered at the worst possible time – like opening a new petrol pump when there is a national fuel shortage. Kutch Copper is an integrated smelter-refinery. That means the chain is connected: Copper concentrate → smelter → anode/semi-refined copper → refinery → copper cathode If the smelter side is unstable, the refinery side also cannot run properly. Bloomberg also noted that the company imported more than 26,400 metric tonnes of copper anodes over two years, which suggests the refinery may have used semi-processed input during ramp-up instead of relying fully on its own smelter output. A 500 KTPA plant needs world-class feedstock sourcing and smelter control. Kutch is trying to scale both at the same time in a very tight global concentrate market.

Mahendragiri is the sixth Project 17A vessel delivered within 17 months :) Why Indian warships used to take so long? India has been building frigates at Mazagon Dock (Mumbai) since the 1970s. But for decades, the process was painfully slow. The best example is Project 17 - the Shivalik class (3 frigates, all built at MDL). INS Shivalik keel was laid in July 2001. It was supposed to be ready by 2005. It actually got commissioned in April 2010. 9 years. The other two ships, Satpura and Sahyadri, also took about 9 years each. The entire project ran 260% over budget. Why 9 years? Three reasons were stacking up on each other: First - foreign dependency for basic raw material. The hull needed special high-strength steel called D-40S. India didn't make it. Russia supplied it. Russian deliveries were late, by years, not months. The whole project was stuck at step one because the steel wasn't arriving. DRDO and SAIL eventually developed indigenous warship steel, but that came too late for Shivalik. Second - foreign dependency for critical equipment. The gas turbines came from GE (USA). GE needed US government export clearance to install them on an Indian warship. That clearance got stuck. Weapons came from Russia - those deliveries were also late. The propulsion system (CODOG - combined diesel or gas) was being used for the first time ever on an Indian frigate, so there were integration problems nobody had solved before. Third - the construction method itself was outdated. MDL was building ships the traditional way. You lay the keel, build the hull from bottom to top, complete the entire body of the ship. Then - only after the hull is done - you start outfitting. That means sending workers inside the completed hull to install pipes, cables, ventilation, switchboards, weapon mounts, sensors, accommodation, everything. This is extremely slow because workers are crawling into confined spaces, working in sequence (you can't install the ceiling panel before the cable tray above it, you can't install the cable tray before the pipe behind it). One trade waits for another. And if something doesn't fit or a component arrives late, the whole chain stops. This is how most shipyards in the world built warships in the 1990s. But by the 2000s, advanced shipyards in Korea, Japan, Italy, and the US had moved to a completely different method. THE SHIFT - What MDL changed for Project 17A When the Indian Navy planned Project 17A (Nilgiri class - 7 frigates), they didn't just design a better ship. They fundamentally changed how the ship gets built. Four things changed: 1. Integrated Construction (Modular Block Assembly) This is the single biggest change. Instead of building the hull first and outfitting later, MDL now does this: The entire ship is divided into large blocks - each block weighing around 300 tonnes. Think of the ship as being cut into 20-30 chunks. Each chunk is built separately in a workshop. And the key part - while the block is sitting in the workshop, open and accessible, workers install everything inside it. Pipes, cables, insulation, equipment, switchboards, ventilation ducts - all fitted at the block stage. Why is this faster? Because when the block is in a workshop, it's open. Workers can approach it from all sides. Multiple trades can work simultaneously. You don't have to wait for someone else to finish. Welders, electricians, pipe fitters - all working at the same time on different blocks. Then, when all blocks are ready, a giant crane picks them up and places them together. The hull comes together with most of the internal work already done. You just connect the blocks - join the pipes, connect the cables across block boundaries and the ship is nearly complete. MDL didn't invent this method on their own. In December 2015, they signed a deal with Fincantieri - Italy biggest shipbuilder, the company that builds frigates for the Italian Navy and has decades of experience in modular construction. Fincantieri provided the technical know-how, training, and process design that taught MDL how to plan, sequence, and execute modular construction properly. This is not just about having a crane and cutting the ship into pieces. The hard part is planning, you need to know exactly which pipe, cable, and equipment goes into which block, in what order, before the block is even built. That planning and sequencing expertise is what Fincantieri transferred. 2. Parallel construction at multiple sites MDL didn't build all blocks at one yard. The four MDL frigates had their blocks fabricated at MDL's main facility in Mumbai, its subordinate facility at Nhava, a shipyard in Gujarat, and another in Goa. Blocks were built simultaneously at all these locations, then transported to Mumbai for final assembly. 3. Indigenous steel, the Russian bottleneck removed DRDO and SAIL developed warship-grade steel domestically. SAIL now supplies about 4,000 tonnes of steel per ship from its Bokaro, Bhilai, and Rourkela plants. No more waiting 2-3 years for Russian shipments. The steel is available when needed, on Indian timelines. This sounds like a small thing but it was the root cause of the Shivalik delays. If your raw material arrives 2 years late, your ship is automatically 2 years late. By fixing the steel supply, they removed the very first bottleneck in the chain. 4. Infrastructure upgrades at MDL MDL invested in new physical infrastructure specifically designed for modular construction: A Goliath gantry crane, this is the massive crane that can lift 300-tonne pre-outfitted blocks and place them with precision onto the growing hull. Without this crane, modular construction is impossible. A module workshop - a large covered hall where blocks can be outfitted regardless of weather (Mumbai's monsoon used to halt open-air work for months). A wet basin - for launching and floating the assembled ship.A cradle assembly shop, for final block integration. These aren't small upgrades. This is rebuilding the shipyard's core capability. THE FUTURE - Project 17B The DAC cleared Project 17B in September 2024 - ₹70,000 crore for 7-8 next generation frigates. These will be bigger (up to 8,000 tonnes vs 6,670 for P17A), more stealthy, with more indigenous weapons and sensors. The RFP is expected soon and the first ship could come by early 2030s. MDL is already preparing. They're reclaiming 10 acres at their Mumbai facility for two new basins, doubling deadweight capacity from 40,000 to 80,000 tonnes. They've acquired 37 acres at Nhava Sheva to eventually reach 2 lakh tonnes capacity. They've also acquired a controlling stake in Colombo Dockyard in Sri Lanka. Everything MDL learned on P17A - modular construction, indigenous steel, parallel fabrication, supply chain management - carries forward into P17B. The expectation is that P17B build times will be even shorter because MDL now has the institutional knowledge, the infrastructure, and the vendor ecosystem already in place.

@sambhavcapital Remove protection give targeted incentive and use the chinese playbook

@Normal_2610 If India is finally confident enough to lower trade barriers, which domestic industries are actually globally competitive enough to win without protection?

Bloomberg Going heavy on India :) India is racing to sign free trade agreements (FTAs) & tearing down some of those walls fast. This shift happened because India is now stronger at negotiating. Earlier, India was weak so it hid behind high walls. Now it can open doors while still protecting key areas. It is a sign India feels confident as Asia No.3 economy.