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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.In India, we treat leadership the way we treat wedding guests: the more people hanging around to feed your ego, the more important you must be.The Ego Equation is simple: Power + Applause – Answerability = Inflated Human Balloon.In theory, leadership is about service. In practice, it often resembles a group project where one person signs the report and everyone else does the work. The moment someone acquires a title, their WhatsApp typing speed slows by 40%.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Two centuries and a half ago, Adam Smith used the example of a pin factory in The Wealth of Nations to explain how capitalism uses division of labour to boost productivity by splitting production into specialized tasks done by workers paid to work in close coordination for efficiency. But what happens to this model if AI agents run factories and companies?Andon Labs, a US-based startup, runs a cafe where tasks like inventory control, hiring, scheduling and operations are supervised by Mona, an AI agent powered by Google Gemini, even as human baristas brew and serve coffee.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Is Keynesian advice relevant to India’s economy? Austerity, Keynes warned, could worsen an economic slump. If we all cut back on spending, output would reduce.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Going back to grad school has long been the Plan B of young professionals who aspire to climb higher in their careers or struggle to get promoted in a tough job market. New data show that getting a master’s degree isn’t the guarantee it used to be.The unemployment rate for workers under 35 with a master’s degree has rarely been higher in the past 20 years, according to the Burning Glass Institute, a labor-market think tank focused on the future of work, which analyzed data collected by the U.S.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Telecom operator Vodafone Idea showed early signs of operational improvement in the March quarter, as its subscriber base stabilised and average revenue per user (Arpu) rose.Analysts, however, said the company’s long-term recovery still hinges on securing larger funding to manage spectrum liabilities and improve services.On Saturday, the company’s board approved a ₹4,730 crore fund infusion from promoter Aditya Birla Group entity Suryaja Investments Pte Ltd, through issuance of 4.3 billion equity-convertible warrants at ₹11 per share.The funding is largely seen as a signal to lenders that promoters are backing the company at a time when Vodafone Idea has been struggling to secure much-awaited bank financing, according to analysts.“The warrant issue is a positive signal because it reflects continued promoter commitment and brings fresh capital into Vodafone Idea. But ₹4,730 crore by itself is not large enough to resolve the company’s structural challenges,” said Parag Kar, an independent telecom analyst.The bigger challenge remains spectrum liabilities, future payment obligations, capex needs, and cash-flow generation.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.SEATTLE—Not long ago, Amazon was seen as an also-ran in the great AI race.Microsoft, in particular—with its partnership with OpenAI and cloud business outpacing Amazon’s AWS—seemed to have reclaimed its place as the Puget Sound’s reigning tech giant.Things are looking much different for AWS today.That’s thanks to some savvy deals of its own with OpenAI and Anthropic, plans for $200 billion of infrastructure spending and Amazon’s long-term bet on custom chips. It’s also not involved in the ugly tech trial of the year sucking in the biggest names in AI, from Elon Musk and Sam Altman to Mira Murati and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.“People thought we were behind,” Matt Garman, head of Amazon’s cloud-computing business, AWS, told me in an interview here on the corporate campus.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.It sounds like the investment opportunity of a lifetime: a chance to get in on one of the hottest names on Wall Street, before the company’s stock even starts trading.Financial advisers say buyer beware.It is technically possible for ordinary investors to get ahead of the coming oversize and high-profile public offerings expected in 2026—including SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic. Investors can get access through direct secondary marketplaces, exchange-traded funds that advertise private-company exposure and even crypto tokens that seek to mirror the performance of the company’s shares.But all those methods vary greatly in risk level and degree of actual ownership on offer, highlighted by Anthropic’s market-rattling warning this past week that it won’t recognize investments not approved by its board.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.NEW DELHI: Even as India braces for record electricity demand this summer, power prices on exchanges recently slumped to zero in multiple trading sessions. The sharp fall has highlighted a growing challenge for India’s power sector: managing rising solar generation in the absence of adequate storage capacity.The trend has implications for renewable energy developers, power distribution companies and grid managers.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Before recipes became searchable, scrollable, and endlessly replicable, they were fleeting.They existed in moments, on television screens, in conversations, in memory. If you missed it, you missed it. And if you wanted to hold on to it, you wrote it down.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The diplomatic stalemate between the US and Iran has spiralled into one of the most severe energy crises in modern history. The failure to secure a breakthrough agreement has left the global energy market reeling from an unprecedented supply shock, with policymakers appearing as helpless as cats chasing the shadows of birds overhead.The West Asia conflict and blockade of the Strait of Hormuz triggered a historic drain on global oil inventories, which plunged by 246 million barrels across March and April alone.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Coal is making a comeback.Countries around the world are returning to the highly polluting but reliable source of power after the Iran war effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz and cut off around 20% of global liquefied natural gas supplies.Taiwan is restarting idled coal-fired power plants and South Korea boosted the amount of electricity it generated from coal by more than a third last month. In Europe, Italy has put its coal plants on standby as it girds for a prolonged energy shock.Spot coal prices at Australia’s Newcastle port, a key supplier to Asia, have jumped 12% since the war started.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.In his first speech as chief minister of Tamil Nadu, Joseph Vijay said in Tamil, “I have known poverty; I’ve known hunger. I am not from some royalty.” This whole country seems to be filled with self-made men. Except that most of them may not be at all.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Investing in artificial intelligence involves a strong belief that it’s different this time, and memory-chip makers are a particularly extreme example.Micron Technology recorded its biggest-ever loss just three years ago, and is now forecast to become the sixth-most profitable U.S. stock. It will make just under $100 billion over the next 12 months, more than Meta or Berkshire Hathaway.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Through the dotcom bust, the 2008 crisis, demonetization, the Covid crash, the Ukraine war, and every oil shock in between, my answer in this column has been almost monotonously the same. Stay the course. Don’t react to the news.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.IT WAS A tale of two summits. Meeting in China for the first time since 2017, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping committed to stabilising relations and suggested that they had reached new agreements on trade and other areas.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.In the sleepy world of trust planning, the topsy-turvy stock market is creating big tax-savings opportunities.While irrevocable trusts are permanent structures, the assets within them are flexible and can be swapped at any time with different similarly valued assets—a strategy worth considering during times of extreme swings in market values.“Asset swapping often falls between the cracks,” says Ed Renn, of counsel on the private client and tax team at Withers. “Some people are knocking around with trust structures from years back and may not be proactive when it comes to managing assets in the trusts.”Swapping assets is often part of estate planning for wealthy taxpayers aiming to minimize exposure to the 50% estate tax rate.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.While Y2K has dominated the conversation for seasons, the defining footwear of 2026 requires turning the clock back even further. This summer, we are stepping away from the heavy, chunky silhouettes of the recent past in favour of the refined minimalism of the 1990s. The look is decidedly editorial, sleek, intentional, and balanced by a playful sense of kitsch.The kitten heel has made its triumphant return, offering a sharp but sensible elevation, while mules and satin ballerinas have reclaimed their status as it-girl staples.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Karan Mahajan’s third novel The Complex is aptly titled, as it is set in a warren of apartments that belong to the Chopra family in Model Colony, north Delhi. The word “complex” itself denotes psychology (inferiority complex, god complex and the like), architecture (a building with added features), and of course everyday language (complicated).

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.I first heard about Margherita 10 years ago and was immediately intrigued. A short and very scenic drive from Dibrugarh, this village in Assam remained on my bucket list since, and last week, the trip finally materialised.Its claim to fame is not just as the source of India’s tea story but also of oil, coal and plywood. The Digboi oil refinery is a stone’s throw from here, oil having been discovered accidentally while the railway line was being built in 1881.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The AI tool we unlocked today is: ChatGPT Memory Sources.Here is a frustration that builds quietly over months of AI use: ChatGPT starts sounding oddly familiar—it remembers your name, your tone preferences, a project you mentioned in passing.Most of the time, that is useful.But occasionally it says something that feels off—a recommendation shaped by a context you no longer care about, a preference it picked up from a conversation six months ago that no longer applies.Until now, you had no way to trace where that came from.Memory Sources fixes this.When ChatGPT uses your past chats or saved memories to shape a response, it now shows you what it referenced—and lets you delete or update that information on the spot.You are no longer managing a black box. You can see the inputs.How to access: https://chatgpt.comAudit the context: see which past conversations or saved details shaped any given response, before acting on it.Fix stale assumptions: delete or update outdated preferences the moment they surface in a reply—not buried in settings later.Trust the personalization: when you can see why ChatGPT responded the way it did, you can rely on it more—or correct it faster.A marketing lead uses ChatGPT regularly for campaign briefs.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.In the mid-1980s, when a personal computer in India cost as much as ₹80,000, a young Tamil entrepreneur walked into the stalled market and crashed prices by more than half.Chinnakannan Sivasankaran, known simply as Siva, had just bought Sterling Computers from Robert Amritraj, father of tennis star Vijay Amritraj. His opening move was to launch the Siva PC at ₹33,000 with the tagline “The Power of Siva.”The market responded immediately as rivals were forced to cut prices.