This week was all about getting close to the finish line

Policy

The Economic Case for Space Exploration

On Monday, we made the economic case for space Exploration. Now obviously since the Chandrayaan-2 lander failed to deploy on the south pole of the moon there’s been an effort from a small group of people who’ve tried to derail the discussion by shifting focus away from ISROs achievements and instead, focusing on the money spent by the government on space exploration.

We clearly did not agree with that assessment because in our minds the benefits of space exploration far outweigh the budgetary allocation that the country makes to further space research in India. It has the potential to change the cultural outlook of this country and inspire generations of kids to take up science and research.

Anyway, this is a watered-down version of the story and if you haven't read it already, you should do it immediately.

Also, we talked about Zomato’s decision to fire over 500 employees in an attempt to reduce redundancies. We wanted to see if this would have a tangible impact in reducing the company's losses. Turns out it doesn't. Anyway, you can read more about it here.

Policy

On Tuesday, our big story was on the RBI mandate forcing all banks to link their loans to an external benchmark. Now, this is obviously a very technical matter. So the entire focus was on providing a simplified explanation. If you haven't checked it out already, you should do it here.

Business and Markets

Trump's Volatile Tweets

On Wednesday the big story was about Trump and his twitter account. The story goes that when Donald Trump tweets from his account (especially about stuff related to the trade war), it affects markets in a big way and JP Morgan wanted to find out “by how much”. So they devised something called the Volfefe Index and every news channel picked it up, including us obviously and we had to do a story on it. Anyway, if you want to check it out, you can read the entire thing here.

Also, there was this other rumour about PayTM wanting to acquire a small part of Yes Bank; by buying out the co-founder and the erstwhile CEO, Rana Kapoor. Our story focused on the hypotheticals surrounding the deal.

What if the deal goes through? How will PayTM metamorphosise afterwards? Will it add any real benefit to either party?

Well... If you want to find out, don't forget to read more here.

Policy

Blame the Millennials?

Then on Thursday, we talked about Nirmala Sitharaman’s comments about the auto slowdown. Now obviously millennials did not take kindly to being told that they were the reason behind the automotive slowdown. However, we wanted to part the curtains and truly understand if there was any merit in her assessment.

And we found out that millennials were, in fact, less enthusiastic about car purchases overall. However, what we couldn’t find was an automatic link between millennials opting to ride in an Uber and the trouble in the auto sector. That is something that’s still debatable. And debate we did right here.

Business

The WeWork IPO is in shambles

On Friday we talked about the big challenges facing WeWork, especially considering their plans to go public seems to be in serious jeopardy after news broke that Softbank was considering asking WeWork to scrap the IPO for now.

Clearly this does not bode well for WeWork because their future seemingly rests on this IPO. For SoftBank, its an even bigger challenge. Because if the public does not respond well to the IPO, chances are, they will have to take a big hit on their profits.

So its a catch 22 for WeWork and for a more detailed prognosis you can visit our full story on the matter right here.

Anyway, that's it from us this week. We will see you on Monday.

Until then .... Keep smiling :)