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The Fine Print Of Opportunity
The Weekend Playlist
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The week began with the Iran war feeding oil anxiety, the rupee sliding to record lows, and India’s governance machinery coming under sharper scrutiny. This edition explores the same with Surjit Bhalla, Dr. Rajeswari Sengupta, Rishi Agrawal and Dr. Rakesh Mohan, who look at the conditions attached to India’s economic promise.
Sahil Kapoor remains cautiously constructive amid current market volatility. On the other hand, Irina Ghose and Ajit Prabhu show the upside more directly: India’s AI adoption is accelerating, from productivity tools to engineering, energy and manufacturing.
The promise is visible across India’s economy. The fine print is harder: confidence, discipline, governance, productivity and the ability to execute through shocks.
WEEKEND EDITION
Surjit Bhalla’s Warning On FDI, Policy And The Rupee
Is India Facing A Rupee Problem Or A Confidence Problem?
In this episode of Weekend Edition, financial journalist Govindraj Ethiraj speaks with Surjit Bhalla, ex-IMF economist and author, who argues that India’s current anxiety cannot be explained by the rupee alone. Oil prices, West Asia tensions and global uncertainty may have intensified the pressure, but they did not create the underlying weakness.
Bhalla points to the sharp decline in net FDI as the clearest warning sign. FDI matters not just because it brings money, but because it brings technology, supply chains and global market access. India, he argues, began assuming around 2015 that foreign investors needed India more than India needed them. Bilateral investment treaty changes, retrospective taxation fears, quality control orders and weak ease of doing business have all added to investor hesitation.
This is also why India has not fully captured the China Plus One opportunity. While Vietnam and Bangladesh benefited from supply chain shifts, India kept talking about raising manufacturing’s share of GDP without creating the policy architecture to make it happen.
Bhalla is blunt on private investment too. Companies are not failing to invest because they lack patriotism or ambition. They are responding rationally to incentives. Fix the policies, he says, and investment will follow.
Key Insight
India cannot win the China Plus One race on infrastructure alone; it also needs predictable rules, investor trust and easier exits.
SPECIAL EDITION
The Macro Shock And The Red Tape Drag
India’s economy is facing pressure from two very different directions. At the top, the rupee is weakening. At the bottom, businesses are still navigating a maze of rules, filings and penalties.
In this episode of The Core Report Special Edition, Govindraj Ethiraj speaks with Dr. Rajeswari Sengupta, Associate professor at IGIDR and Rishi Agrawal of TeamLease Regtech, who point to a deeper question: how attractive is India, really, for capital and enterprise?
Sengupta explains that the rupee was under stress even before the West Asia shock. India is dealing with expensive energy, foreign capital outflows, a harder-to-finance current account deficit, and global investors who now have more competing opportunities, including AI-led bets elsewhere. A falling rupee, she suggests, should not automatically be treated as a crisis. Sometimes, depreciation is the price adjustment an economy needs. The bigger risk is when policy tries too hard to suppress market signals or reacts in ways that look like panic.
Agrawal brings the conversation down to the business floor. India may want more manufacturing, MSME growth and foreign investment, but entrepreneurs still face a dense compliance burden. Decriminalisation, Jan Vishwas, labour law reform and digitisation are steps forward, but the system still needs a “UPI moment” for compliance: simple, trusted, digital and scalable.
Key Insight
India’s growth problem is not just about attracting capital. It is about making the country easier to trust, invest in and build from.
India’s Growth Challenge After The Oil Shock
What happens when an external shock exposes deeper questions about India’s economic engine?
In this episode of The Core Report Special Edition, Govindraj Ethiraj speaks with former RBI Deputy Governor, Dr. Rakesh Mohan who explains why India’s response to the West Asia crisis cannot be limited to oil prices or the rupee. The immediate task is to assess energy supplies, fertiliser availability, petroleum-linked inputs, price pressures, reserves, and contingency scenarios depending on how long the disruption lasts. But the larger issue is that India entered the shock with pre-existing concerns around capital flows, private investment, exports, manufacturing competitiveness, and the real exchange rate.
Mohan notes that India has benefited from macroeconomic and financial stability, but merchandise exports and industrial production have remained weaker than desired for several years. Mohan’s view is that India needs to look east more seriously, attract investment into sectors such as garments, footwear, furniture, and light manufacturing, and strengthen logistics through dedicated freight corridors.
Key Insight
The oil shock may be external, but India’s response depends on fixing internal weaknesses.
Why SIPs Are Methodical, Not Magical
Most investors enter the stock market with a deceptively simple expectation: if the Nifty has delivered around 12% CAGR over 25 years, why shouldn’t they?
In this episode of The Core Report Special Edition, Govindraj Ethiraj speaks with DSP Mutual Fund’s Sahil Kapoor who points out that market averages are not investor averages. Returns are unevenly distributed, mistakes are costly, and the investor who exits during a 40% drawdown never gets to enjoy the recovery.
Kapoor’s broader market view is cautious but not gloomy. India is no longer in euphoric valuation territory, though it is not cheap either. Large caps look more attractive than small and mid caps. Private banks, beaten-down IT stocks, select FMCG and chemical companies offer value pockets. Corporate balance sheets are clean and cycle-ready, but demand remains the missing trigger. Consumption is weak, exports are shaky, and India’s corporate cycle is still running on “one-and-a-half engines” rather than full power.
Key Insight
The real edge in investing may not come from predicting the next rally, but from building a process that keeps you invested through fear, froth and fatigue.
NASSCOM CONVERSATIONS
AI's Real Impact in India
In the latest episode of Nasscom Conversations, Govindraj Ethiraj speaks with Irina Ghose of Anthropic who states that India is already Claude’s second-largest user base globally. More importantly, the way Indians are using it shows how quickly AI is moving from curiosity to productivity tool.
Ghose says India stands out for its technical intensity. Around 45% of Claude usage here is for technical and mathematical tasks, and more than half the audience is technical. For enterprises, Ghose’s advice is clear: don’t ask, “What can we do with AI?” and launch 50 pilots. Instead, identify three or four “big rocks” the business must solve over the next 6 to 18 months, bring governance in early, and build AI fluency across teams.
Key Insight
India’s edge is its habit of building technology frugally, simply and for population-scale constraints.
The Next AI Boom May Be Industrial
In this episode of Nasscom Conversations, Govindraj Ethiraj speaks with Ajit Prabhu of Quest Global who’s view of AI is clear: its biggest impact may not be in chatbots or coding alone, but in engineering-heavy industries where products, factories and infrastructure are becoming smarter.
Prabhu argues that AI is also creating demand, not just automating work. Data centres need power, which is boosting the energy sector. Smarter industrial products need more chips, helping semiconductors. Defence, aerospace, automotive and manufacturing are all becoming more software-led.
A Key Insight
The winners will be engineers, who are problem solvers, who understand systems, and think one level above their assigned role.
THE CORE QUIZ
Which country has emerged as a key fallback crude supplier for India during the West Asia conflict? |
THE MEDIA ROOM
#Rewind: Sameer Nair’s Content Playbook
Sameer Nair’s career tracks the evolution of Indian entertainment itself: from appointment-viewing television to today’s fragmented streaming economy.
In this rewind episode of The Media Room, Vanita Kohli-Khandekar revisits a powerful conversation with the media leader who helped shape Kaun Banega Crorepati, Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, Star India, Applause Entertainment and some of India’s most watched streaming shows.
For Nair, India’s opportunity is clear: it has the talent, stories and audience depth to become a global content powerhouse. The challenge is building the business discipline to match the creative energy.
Key Insight
Indian entertainment’s next leap will not come from more content alone, but from making great stories work as sustainable businesses.
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