KMS

@aviralbhat The challenge is same as the diapers category. The primary user is not the decision-maker in the early stages of category acquaintance. Then every 7-8 years, you have to acquire a new set of consumers as older ones move to iPad or digital. Margins are low & stationary needs space

Stationery seems to be interestingly dominated only by legacy brands: - Camlin (94 years old) - Natraj (68 years old) - DOMS (52 years old) There definitely is a play for a new age consumer brand here, wonder why it's not being built

@IExpressSports @pdevendra True tribute by a CSK blood to ex-Railways employee MSD. Thala for a reason😎

It's not often that a top Indian cricketer travels by train. But that's what Shivam Dube did a few hours after the #T20WorldCup final because flights to Mumbai were fully booked. He wanted to get home quickly to be with his children. By @pdevendra indianexpress.com/article/sports…

@aditya_kondawar The same pattern will be repeated in India as well and once the semaglutides go off-patent in April, we will have a deluge of cheaper generic versions. This article written a year back alludes to the potential first and second order effects. theprint.in/opinion/mounja…

In early 2024, executives at Walmart noticed something strange in their data. Nothing dramatic at first — just a subtle shift. Customers were buying slightly fewer: snacks sugary drinks packaged desserts At first, the analysts blamed inflation. Maybe people were cutting discretionary spending. But when the company dug deeper into its massive consumer dataset, a surprising pattern emerged. Customers who were taking Ozempic or Wegovy were spending less on food overall — and dramatically less on high-calorie products. They weren’t switching brands. They were simply buying less food. The discovery stunned executives. For decades, the entire packaged food industry had been built on one assumption: People will keep eating more. But now a pharmaceutical injection taken once a week was quietly rewriting consumer behavior. One Walmart executive summarized the discovery bluntly: “We’re seeing a real reduction in calories purchased.” For the first time, a drug wasn’t just treating a disease. It was changing the economics of the grocery aisle. Businesses can face competition from anywhere :)

@EducatedMoron The QFs and beyond have historically been a private club for Europe and South America, and this has been the case since 1990. This is usually where the "Cinderella stories" from Africa, Asia, or North America end :)

Irrespective of who wins in India vs WI today, this T20 World Cup will have four semifinalists from four different continents. For all the “why call it a World Cup?” rhetoric sparked by that viral map tweet, this hasn’t happened ever in 22 editions of the FIFA Men’s World Cup.

@sting_punk @avataram Profs don’t bother about these things. They have seen enough of these shenanigans.

@avataram Wait I thought he was a prof and not a fucking CAT coaching runner

@avataram My brother is a CA, and my nephew is at an old IIT. Not sure what their future conversations will look like. That reminds me, Ashneer Grover's dad was a CA, too.

@GabbbarSingh Then companies should start hiring basis CAT scores, coz the "filter" part is sorted. Why waste 2 years pursuing an MBA and deal with that "placebo"? I am sure you can convince blue-chip recruiters to hire an undergrad at the same CTC if he/she has an IIM-worthy CAT score.

Top Colleges in India are essentially filters of talent & hard-work. The intensely competitive entrance exams do the filtering, and then the colleges quarantine that talent for 3/4 years and then give it back to the world. The education that college passes during the quarantine period is largely placebo. It has a perception of utility. The outside world is interested coz of that entrance filter, not the education. Because they also know, they will have to re-train & up skill the talent once they walk in. The only exception is Medical degrees.

@tusharUSC @peeleraja You might be surprised: the boardroom is already full of Engineers. Data on India's top policymakers (Secretaries) over the last decade (2016-26) shows that 50% have a STEM Background. Within just these 8 key ministries, there have been 7 Secretaries who are alumni of the IITs.

@peeleraja That is impressive but, I would be very proud when brilliant folks find problems which keeping India in a third world rut. -Sophisticated engineering product designs -Civic problems garbage, road, aqi, traffic -next level facility planning -indigenous rail going @250km/hr

One IIT-educated lawyer, J Sai Deepak, is single handedly destroying all the NLSIU/NUJS/NALSAR cabal. This is the power of IIT!

@SAMTHEBESTEST_ She stays in Andheri (W), Mumbai. Top floor flat, 5 BHK. Her JLR is parked there too

#Dhoom and #Golmaal actress #RimiSen is now working as an Real Estate Agent in Dubai 🥹🤯

@kushkatakia Modern day labour contractor extolling the virtues of how a slaughterhouse benefits the goats.

One of India's finest thinkers, Mr Manish Sabharwal, takes the left liberals to task. "Prosperity matters more than inequality. If you threw Gautam Adani, Nandan Nilekani, and Kiran Mazumdar into the sea, India's Gini coefficient would improve, but the poor wouldn't care."

@aparanjape I wrote about this possibility in my op-ed published in @ThePrintIndia in April 2025. @_jesthetic - We spoke about this.

Packaged food makers and fast-food restaurants may be forced to overhaul more of their products next year as newly approved, appetite-suppressing GLP-1 pills become available in January, analysts say. medscape.com/s/viewarticle/…

@TheSanjivKapoor hahaha …love the sarcasm. Reminded me of this iconic tweet

Thanks for the advice. As a novice in the Indian aviation and travel industry, I love to learn from folks on X 😉

@manujosephsan Many years ago, a celebrated film critic made an artsy movie with the then toast of the nation as the male lead. The movie underperformed; it was not massy anyways. His erstwhile peers wrote reviews that read more like an obituary 🥲

Prashant Kishor's election performance reminds me of what happens when literary critics write their debut novels.

@ku1deep @_jesthetic

So Semaglutide goes off-patent in India next year and the generics are already lined up. From what I understand Natco pharma will be first off the block. They were first-to-file. Dr. Reddy's will be next or Alkem I think. Prices are expected to fall to 500-1000 (~$6-$12per month). Even at current prices Munjuro is doing 100Cr+ a month. Imagine what happens when this is affordable to almost 50-100mn people. This is going to be such a change maker for this society. Expect so much to change.

@avataram He became acerbic after migrating to the US. Probably, the harsh winters screwed up his brains. We have to cut some slack, solely for his valiant fight against that charlatan of IIPM.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Poisson regression is to nonnegative outcomes with an exponential E(Y|X) as OLS is to linear models: neither requires any additional assumptions. Just as OLS doesn't require normality, Poisson reg doesn't require a Poisson dist.

Agree with everything that Brian suggests. The most important one is dropping that oversized ego. It does not help at all and blindsides you further. Second, falling in love with one's work is expected, but does not help. Peer review system, despite its flaws, definitely helps.

The Indian paints industry, as it stands today, is a textbook Bresnahan case post-entry of Birla & JSW: If λ =market power, the industry is moving towards a lower λ (higher competition, low coordination, price war) from a stable λ (moderate market power, disciplined competition)

What it's all about. 💜🥹 Prof. Joel Mokyr, winner of the @NobelPrize in Economic Sciences, shares a lovely message from a former student.

@avataram Is that bit about Prashant Bhushan leaving IIT Madras after first semester true?