For Korean companies, India is a lucrative cash cow: LG India reported revenue of Rs 24,366 crore and a net profit of Rs 2,203 crore last year. Royalty payments to its Korean parent reached Rs 454.61 crore. But the real headline came with its 2025 IPO: In one stroke, LG India’s market capitalisation surpassed that of its global headquarters’. And it was purely due to generous policy environment.
Hyundai Motor India and its sibling Kia tell a similar tale of extraction masked as investment. Royalty payments stand at 3.5% of sales revenue, translating into thousands of crores annually repatriated to Seoul. Such an anomaly has left Tata Motors and Mahindra to fight an uphill battle against what many term subsidized Korean pricing power.
Samsung India completes the triumvirate of value extractors. Its revenue for the first time crossed Rs 1.11 lakh crore during 2025, making it the only consumer-electronics firm in India to cross the trillion-rupee mark. During 2024, royalty remittances to the Korean parent hit Rs 3,322 crore, roughly 40% of that year’s net profit. Retained earnings have ballooned and been diverted to Vietnam.
Profits earned from Indian consumers through high royalties, IPO cash-outs and dividend flows are effectively subsidizing Vietnamese factories that then export finished goods back into India. Why? Should Korean conglomerates plough cash extracted from India into manufacturing facilities in a smaller neighbor that then undercuts Indian industry? The optics is toxic: India as a lucrative cash cow, Vietnam as the preferred factory floor.
Decades of liberalization were sold on the promise that FDI would catalyze domestic industry, transfer technology and create balanced growth. Instead, the policy has tilted towards foreign giants who repatriate profits, royalties, special dividends and IPO proceeds liberally.
On the other hand, Indian firms struggle with higher compliance costs, delayed approvals, and a royalty burden that starves local innovation.
Funding the Adversary: India cannot counter an expansionist rival, which lays claim to vast Indian territories including an entire state, while simultaneously bankrolling its rise.
Trump kissing Xi Jinping's ass: A quiet U.S. favor for Xi Jinping.. A U.S. quota increase at the IMF would rescue China’s bad loans.
President Trump is scheduled to visit Beijing in May for a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and he will come bearing at least one surprising gift: A budget request to Congress to hand more money to Mr. Xi’s friends at the IMF.
Chinese satellites over Mideast battlefield put US on edge: Chinese AI company MizarVision claimed on social media to have tracked the movements of American aircraft carriers, F-22 stealth fighters and B-52 bombers by using AI to analyze satellite data.
Microwave weapon: 20-gigawatt Chinese microwave weapon touted as ‘Starlink’s worst nightmare’ by country's media — portable 5-ton device can deliver full-minute destructive bursts
Lesson for India, the GREAT consumer of imported tech: Iran claims US exploited networking equipment backdoors during strikes — says devices from Cisco and others failed despite blackout in attack that 'indicates deep sabotage'
Privacy risk: Google Chrome lacks protection against one of the most basic and common ways to track users online
Watching India pitch itself as a “rule-setter” in AI is a reminder that geopolitics now includes a new category: Countries whose technological progress occurs primarily in keynote presentations.
India doesn’t have an AI industry, but they have an AI narrative: “If we can’t build… pic.twitter.com/XnhLmwu2yk
R&D poor nation: The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) proposed Rs 28,169 crore but received Rs 21,632 crore at the budget estimates stage — a reduction of nearly Rs 6,500 crore. The ministry proposed Rs 13,000 crore for the semiconductor programme but received Rs 8,000 crore at the budget estimates stage.
A giant leap for our energy sector: India is now only the second country after Russia to operate a commercial-scale FBR. Parallel development of the third stage to leverage India’s vast thorium resources, a vision conceived by Dr Homi Bhabha.
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China has been trying to build a Fast Breeder Reactor for 20 years.
Meta must face youth addiction lawsuit: "...designing a social media platform that capitalizes on the developmental vulnerabilities of children or by affirmatively misleading consumers about the safety of the Instagram platform"
Akkala Rami Reddy found that a parcel of his family land, which had been temporarily given to a distant relative for use as a cattle shed, had allegedly been converted into a Christian prayer hall. The relative had converted to Christianity and changed the site into a place of worship.
Solar is winning the energy race: The world's cheapest power source is scaling at warp speed, pushing coal, gas and nuclear aside. In 2015, Pakistan and South Africa each produced less than 1% of their electricity from solar. Ten years later, that has risen to 20% and 10% respectively.
India the big loser in the US-Iran War: At the core the issue is of India being strung out between strategic subservience to the US — that has led to its Gulf policy ending in a cul de sac, and economic dependence on China, with both Washington and Beijing now hanging Modi-Jaishankar and India out to dry.
"Washington will strive to keep India down, preferably under its thumb, economically and in the technology sphere, prop up Pakistan as its main agent in the region, but will expect Delhi to help the US counterpoise China in the Indo-Pacific! The Indian govt is sufficiently spooked by the China threat to want to rely on the US strategically and to do so on American terms. And sure India should arm itself with American weapons, and reproduce any US military goods it wants but under license, thus lighting fire to the atmnirbharta pyre".
🇫🇷🇮🇳 France just drew a hard line… and it hits India’s airpower strategy directly.
Paris is refusing to give India access to Rafale’s core source codes, which means New Delhi cannot independently modify the jet’s most critical systems, including its radar, mission computer, and… https://t.co/YJ3H46rst0pic.twitter.com/0Nl22cWZa7
The UAE has withdrawn from funding the development of the new Rafale F5 after France refused to transfer advanced technology. The message is clear: Real partnership with genuine technology transfer — or no deal. pic.twitter.com/MUTheN8DHB
— سيف الدرعي| Saif alderei (@saif_aldareei) April 3, 2026
🇨🇳 Chinese civilians with technical backgrounds are increasingly posting detailed military analysis online aimed at helping Iran counter U.S. forces, in a growing grassroots trend across Chinese social media, according to the South China Morning Post.
Showing some spine: Malaysia exits US reciprocal trade deal. Becomes the first country to abandon a pact negotiated under Washington’s reciprocal tariff strategy after a court ruling removed the legal basis for the policy.
Protein myths: “There is no evidence that habitual exercise increases protein requirements; indeed protein metabolism may become more efficient as a result of training.” ..just because it’s post workout, doesn’t mean you need oodles of whey
Bike Bus: "One of the benefits of the bike bus is that when you're cycling as a group you feel a bit safer.
"There's been a lovely buzz watching the bike bus arrive each week and the children who participated have been really happy, enthusiastic, really energised by their bike ride here to school".
"I think it's great for kids mental health as well as their physical health plus I think it's great for parents too.
"I think for the community more broadly too because there's less cars on the road, less congestion, it's better air quality, so there's a lot of benefits."
'The myth about SIPs': At the end of the day, in order for me to win, someone else must lose. Now, in order to create that population of losers, you need the millions of retail investors, the millions of SIP participants, for their capital to flow somewhere.
End of Bitcoin? Google research suggests encryption technique used by Bitcoin will be cracked by quantum computers around 2029 — search giant says quantum attacks need to be prepared for now
Google unveils TurboQuant, a new AI memory compression algorithm — and yes, the internet is calling it 'Pied Piper'. . . A simple explanation of the key idea behind TurboQuant
India’s pollution is becoming an economic roadblock: The government’s inaction runs counter to its goals. The latest budget cut funding for pollution control. It is all getting embarrassing. In December a cricket match between India and South Africa was called off because smog made it impossible to see the ball. In January one the world’s top badminton players pulled out of the India Open in Delhi citing the bad air (and getting a $5,000 fine). Those who did play sent an official complaint to International Olympic Committee.
The Price of Intelligence is Collapsing
One developer with Claude Code can now do what took a team a month. The cost of Claude Pro or ChatGPT is $20 dollars a month, while a Max subscription is $200 dollars. The median US knowledge worker costs ~350-500 dollars a day fully loaded. An agent that handles even a fraction of their workflow a day at ~6-7 dollars is a 10-30x RoI not including improvement in intelligence.
Microsoft’s Conundrum The cost collapse is destroying the seat-based software model. There has been no bigger share shift than Microsoft’s seat-based Office 365. Most of the cash today still comes from Office. The core way of how a human interacts with a computer is about to change, and Microsoft sits at the center of the old paradigm.
Why does a company need to standardize Salesforce if an agent is just going to query data on leads on your behalf? Salesforce is a form and workflow wrapper, and the form and workflow can likely be scaffolded by AI into a database and then queried as needed.
AI fears wipe out $50 billion from Indian IT stocks. . . Software ate the world. AI is eating software.
Dr Vishal Sikka: At a time when there was no ChatGPT, Gemini, or self-driving cars, Vishal Sikka gave a presentation on AI before NITI Aayog at the PM’s request, where officials of 20 Union Ministries were gathered. . . India's risk-averse capitalism has no place people like him
"India Has a Great Opportunity in AI, Period" – Dr. Vishal Sikka (Ex-Infosys)
1. TCS has partnered with him to fight its existential crisis
2. PM & officials have met him multiple times
3. Oracle, GSK, BMW, Stanford have him on their Boards for AI
Existential threat: The European Union should consider either an unprecedented 30% across-the-board tariff on Chinese goods or a 30% depreciation of the euro against the renminbi to counter a flood of cheap imports, according to a French government strategy report.
China is depleting the world's oceans of fish. Estimates are between 200,000 - 800,000 fishing vessels, going as far as Argentina.
They account for ~half of the world's fishing catch and do not respect stewardship protocols to preserve ecosystems. This is not industrial… pic.twitter.com/BfbJoGTveM
The SaaS -Pocalypse Has Begun: For most of the past two decades, enterprise software benefited from a remarkably stable economic story. Software was expensive to build. Switching costs were high. Data lived in proprietary systems.
Once a platform became the system of record, it stayed there. Recurring revenue was treated as a proxy for predictability. Contracts were assumed to be sticky. Cash flows were assumed to be resilient.
AI is now testing every part of that logic at once.
AI doesn't kill the software directly. It kills the headcount that uses the software. Which kills the per-seat revenue model. Which kills the business.
Satya Nadela is basically describing the death of the traditional SaaS model.
Explains the AI agentic future, and where the "value" lives.
Because business logic is moving from the software application to the AI agents.
Anthropic's new AI tools disrupts data analytics and software companies: AI developer Anthropic launched plug-ins for its Claude Cowork agent that would automate tasks across legal, sales, marketing and data analysis. That move has sparked worries of an impending AI-fueled disruption of the data and professional services industry, which were once seen as major beneficiaries of the AI era.
India's staffing-intensive IT sector shaken: "As Indian enterprises integrate Claude for critical coding workflows, dependency on large vendor teams may decline, squeezing billable hours and margins. Anthropic’s advanced AI systems also threaten entry‑level talent pool at Indian IT firms by replacing routine development and testing tasks".
Anything but Deep Tech: Indian corporate investment is characterised by low R&D intensity and concentration in real estate-linked, regulated, or quasi-monopolistic sectors with a relative lack of willingness and appetite to invest towards long-term risk absorption and become globally competitive.
A 'Greater Balochistan'? There is growing trepidation in Pakistan establishment circles that there could be a new great game underway in the region to create a Greater Balochistan comprising Sistan-Baluchistan and Balochistan. This is not just a mineral-rich area, but geographically, a very pivotal area.
A Greater Balochistan will alter the geopolitics of the region, straddling not only the entire Gulf region but also providing a base to access Central Asia and keep a watch over troublesome areas in Iran, Afghanistan and a rump Pakistan. In fact, the geographical relevance that Pakistan keeps talking about comes from its control over Balochistan.
The Pakistanis are losing sleep at the thought of powerful regional and global players waking up to the importance of Balochistan. Operation Herof 2 and the larger Baloch uprising are, therefore, no longer being seen as a local separatist movement but as part of a larger global conspiracy to cut not just Iran but also Pakistan to size.
The United States did not merely abandon the Kurds it handed them over to terror, to knives, to silence. Allies were turned into expendable bodies. Promises were buried alongside the dead. I am a Dutch journalist, and I refuse to look away. I feel the pain of the Kurdish people… pic.twitter.com/u5PYTJdbqD
Why Indian cities are hostile to pedestrians: Annual pedestrian deaths on Indian roads exceed fatalities reported in several active conflict zones globally, underscoring that Indian streets function as a daily warzone for walkers... “Attempts to redesign roads without prioritising pedestrians are a fundamental part of the problem. Footpaths are a default globally, not here.”
DRDO's GaN technology breakthrough: Denied access to compound chip technology by foreign powers, Indian scientists, operating in tandem from Delhi and Hyderabad, crack the code to make gallium nitride (GaN) monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs).
India is no longer dependent on foreign powers for these high-value, cutting-edge chips. Instead, it broke into a select group of six nations—the US, France, Russia, Germany, South Korea and China. . . Defense and commercial applications!
EFTA was terrible. EU FTA is worse: India gives $100B concession without any accountability mechanism implying we got no hard commitment for investment and gave market access for nothing. When CBAM starts taking effect India will be immensely disadvantaged.
Major concession on Machinery/Electrical equipment. India already runs a $16 billion deficit with EU in it. 0% tariff means domestic mfg in this sector will likely never take off. One hopes that exports from labour intensive sectors go up enough to make up for it. https://t.co/Xl1ZozajOH
Foolish NRIs: The overconfidence of the Indian settler in the pre-MAGA days led to excesses. Such as the 90-foot-tall statue of Lord Hanuman, dubbed by some over-clever NRIs who installed it, as the “Statue of Union” in Sugar Land, Texas.
Besides being considered an eyesore by the enraged local Texans, it is a goad for the Christian Nationalists of the American south and southwest that make up the MAGA flock. So far they have restricted themselves to mocking the Monkey God, reviling Hindus as savages, Hinduism as satanic, and Hindu religious symbols as an affront to Christianity. Soon they may take a hammer to the statue, and run the Indians out of the town.
