MUMbAI, NEw dELHI, BENGALURU, KOLKATA, cHENNAI, AHMEdABAd, HydERABAd, cHANdIGARH*, pUNE* VOL. 6 NO. 119 Rs. 10.

Rs. 10.00 18 pAGES

THE CRAZE FOR

SATURDAY, MAy 20 2023
PICKLEBALL
The breaking down of age,
gender, fitness barriers is one
of the reasons why pickleball
is surging in popularity all
over the world. In India, it’s
gaining fans as a recreational
sport that can be played by
everyone in the family.
SEE PAGE 10

₹2,000 NOTES PULLED AHEAD OF ELECTIONS | PAGE 18

BETTING
ON SKILL THE CRICKET-FOCUSED FANTASY SPORTS
MARKET IN INDIA IS BOOMING. DESPITE
LEGAL AND TAXATION CHALLENGES,
EVERYONE WANTS IN ON THE ACTION

THINK
Kanu Behl on his Cannes-
bound second feature, ‘Agra’
SMART LIVING
The war of
the foldables
TASTE
North Indian food beyond
butter masala and ‘chhole’
BUSINESS LOUNGE
Meet the king of
nuts, Rohit Zantye
 02 Saturday, 20 May 2023
MuMbai FIRST

PLAN THE WEEK

A NOTE FROM
THE EDITOR
NEW ON SCREENS AHEAD
A candid portrait of Michael J. Fox, a new instalment of
SHALINI UMACHANDRAN ‘Modern Love’, and other titles to watch this weekend

The trends that

survived covid-19 BEAT THE HEAT

W
hat if you could walk
ISTOCKPHOTO through a land of ice
creams? You actually
can, as part of a unique summer
carnival, Frostyland, at the
Phoenix Marketcity in Mumbai.
The team is back with its annual
summer event, which promises
to beat the heat. Children can
walk through an ice-cream cas-
tle, a sprinkler pool and a popsi-
cle bungalow, learning about
the history of ice creams at the
MODERN LOVE CHENNAI waffle museum. They can
The Modern Love series moves to Chennai, serving up six slice-of-life romances. The directors are Bharathiraja, Thiagarajan savour offerings from brands
Kumararaja, Raju Murugan, Krishnakumar Ramakumar, Balaji Sakthivel and Akshay Sundher. The actors include Ramya such as Baskin Robbins, Natu-
Nambeesan, Delhi Ganesh, Kishore Kumar G. and, fresh off her star turn in Jubilee, Wamiqa Gabbi. (Amazon Prime) rals and MyFroyoLand. There
are engaging workshops for
children across age groups, such
THE SALESMAN as ice-cream painting and bub-
One night, when Emad is out, his wife, ble art. At Phoenix Marketcity,
Rana, is injured after a stranger enters Mumbai, till 30 June, noon-9pm
their house and walks in on her in the (Saturday-Sunday), 3-9pm
bathroom. This incident sets up the (Monday-Friday)
The pandemic gave rise to quite a few pastimes and trends, rest of the film. The subsequent twists
from baking bread, quilling and dance and plank challenges to are characteristic of the cinema of Ira-
boasting about one’s dalgona coffee-making skills, but while nian director Asghar Farhadi. (MUBI)
most of them (fortunately) faded away, some have endured and
thrived. One is fantasy sports, another pickleball, both of
which feature in our issue this week. Neither of these pastimes
is new to India but their popularity has zoomed in the past
three years, aided by the boredom of having to stay indoors or
maintain small social circles, and they have gained devoted
players, fans, followers and promoters.
India is the fastest growing market for fantasy sports, having
about three times more players, or users, than North America,
going by the latest report from the Federation of Indian Fan-
tasy Sports and Deloitte India. Fantasy sports exist entirely in
the online world—players pick their dream teams, whether IN A NEW LIGHT
football, cricket or kabaddi, based on real-life players and

T
scores. These compete against similar teams put together by he Kolkata Centre for Cre-
other users and the winnings depend on the performances of STILL ativity (KCC), in associa-
these sportspersons in live matches. Essentially, everyone gets Michael J. Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson’s at 29, he went public about it tion with Gallery Rasa, is
to play selector, with the prize running into lakhs. Our story, only seven years later. In this Davis Guggenheim documentary, the 61-year-old presenting a new show, Scenes
written by an avid fantasy sports player, goes into the mindset actor is candid, self-depreciating and funny. Asked what it meant to be still From Santiniketan And Benode-
of users who insist that these are games of skill and not gam- before Parkinson’s, he says: “I wouldn’t know. I was never still.” (Apple TV+) behari’s Handscrolls. “The dis-
bling, explains the big wins, and looks at the sector’s future. covery of a previously unknown
The other big pandemic trend (apart from hybrid work) that work by a major artist is a special
has remained is pickleball. A hybrid of table tennis, tennis and BLACK KNIGHT event. The present exhibition
badminton, pickleball can be played almost anywhere. During In this dystopian world, South Korea is revolves around a newly discov-
the lockdowns, people marked makeshift courts on terraces and a desert with toxic air. The oxygen and ered 42.3 feet handscroll by
in parking areas and got their friends and families to join in. Pic- food supply is controlled by the Cheon- Benodebehari Mukherjee called
kleball has had its fans in India since the early 2000s, when myeong group with an elite group of Scenes From Santiniketan,”
Sunil Valavalkar got hooked to it after he played it in Canada and delivery drivers; 5-8 (the charismatic states the gallery note. The
brought it to Mumbai. We meet pickleball’s tireless champion, Kim Woo-bin) is one of them. In this handscroll will be displayed for
who is thrilled that his favourite game is finally being played by highly regimented society, where citi- the first time. In addition, the
everyone from Ellen DeGeneres to Andy Roddick. And if these zens are identified by their QR codes— show will feature reproductions
two sports, one real and the other online, aren’t something new barring the refugees who live on the of other handscrolls, including
you want to try this weekend, you can spend your time on the fringes—the drivers are plotting to foil one from the collection of the
rest of our stories on food, cinema, music and culture. Cheonmyeong’s sinister designs. The Victoria & Albert Museum, Lon-
lavishly made K-drama is enjoyable in don. At the Amphitheatre, KCC,
Write to the Lounge editor at shalini.umachandran@htlive.com parts, with good visual effects and Kolkata, 20 May-20 June, 10am-
@shalinimb action-packed scenes. (Netflix) 6pm ((closed on Sundays)

Compiled by Nipa Charagi and Uday Bhatia. —Compiled by Avantika Bhuyan.

LOUNGE DINE MOVE BUY LIVE

ONLINE
Six unique set-meal
YOUR plates to try
FAVOURITE
WEEKEND READ
J C
apanese bento boxes, Chinese yum
cha set meals, French plat du jour
NOW THROUGH and British high teas are sold to us as
the “plated meal concept” by restau-
THE WEEK rants and cafés and have earned a spot in
the Indian dining scene’s dramatically
rewritten culinary lexicon over the last
The best of Mintlounge.in from decade or so. But India
itself is no stranger to the
the week gone by and what to plated meal—every state
look forward to in the one ahead has its own form of the
thali, an elaborate meal
that is both filling and
sumptuous. From a Gujarati kansa thali
and a plantain-leaf UnSadya meal to an
all-Goan seafood feast and a Kumaoni
thali, Raul Dias samples the OG Indian
set meals which are a true celebration of
regional cuisine.
A guide to buying
carbon-plated shoes
E M
arbon-plated running shoes are
here to stay, despite the many
debates about whether they give
runners an unfair advantage or not. Cer-
tainly, they do add speed and stability to
your run. If you are running a marathon
or regularly cover distances of 21km or
more, carbon-plated
shoes will improve your
performance and even
help you achieve that per-
sonal best. Sohini Sen tests
a number carbon-plated
shoes, taking them on long runs on a
variety of surfaces, and finds that they
make a big difference to speed. Sen picks
three shoes that are likely to serve your
needs, whether you are looking for per-
formance or comfort.
A high-end foldable
with a few trade-offs
very phone maker, with the excep-
tion of Apple, is bringing back the
foldable phone, that mainstay of
the 2000s. The latest on the market is
the Tecno Phantom V Fold, which is a
whole lot of foldable for an aggressive
price tag. This new entrant goes up
against the Samsung Gal-
axy Z Fold 4 book-style
foldable at a price point of
₹88,888, which you would
typically associate with
flip-type foldables. The V
Fold unfolds to a capacious 7.85-inch
display which, like the outer screen,
offers a fluid 120Hz refresh rate, but it
might be the heaviest phone one has
handled in a long time. Tushar Kanwar
reviews the phone.
How to manage
‘mom guilt’
ost mothers feel an inordinate
amount of guilt when they head
to work, leaving children either
at home or with caregivers. Indian moth-
ers are no different. A recent survey finds
that about 84% of them feel more guilt
about working outside the home than
fathers do and 89% feel
inequality in childcare
roles leads to inequality in
career achievements.
“Mom guilt” is hard to
navigate and balancing
work and home responsibilities is diffi-
cult. Bumble CEO and founder Whitney
Wolfe Herd shares her biggest learnings
from leading a company while being a
new mother, pointing out that business
leaders need to be allies for new mothers.

lounge@livemint.com In Food >> Discover In Health >> Fitness In Smart Living >> Innovation In Relationships >> Raising Parents
@mint_lounge
@livemintlounge

ON THE COVER: PHOTOGRAPH FROM ISTOCKPHOTO

This PDF was uploade To Telegram channel_ LBS Newspaper platform (https://t.me/LBSNEWSPAPER) @LBSNEWSPAPER

Re-imagine open spaces for migratory birds
A WA L K
IN THE
WO O D S
NEHA SINHA
S
tanding on the Odisha coast in
January, just before the pandemic
hit, it was hard to tell where the
sky ended and the water began. A
Pacific golden plover, a little bird with a
sharp coat, turned its head and looked
at me, golden accents on its feathers
glinting through the soupy fog. It stood
on stilt-like legs, trembling slightly, like
an otherworldly apparition that would
disappear when the fog lifted.
That cold, tremulous, magical day,
there were many more beaks on the
horizon. A gaggle of loud Bar-headed
geese. A cloud of Black-tailed godwits
who would rise together and descend
again. A flamboyance of Greater flamin-
gos, their pale pinks unrecognisable in
the thick winter fog that enveloped the
shore.
“Foreign shores” is something we
think about during visa applications
and degrees abroad. Yet, many of the
birds from that day in Odisha—the god-
wits, the geese, the golden plover—had
all come to the Chilika lagoon from for-
eign shores. They were among the mil-
lions of birds (and animals) that make
yearly migrations to India. Birds use
what ornithologists call the “Central
Asian Flyway”—a winter migration
route from Central Asia and Eastern
Europe to South Asia. This is a fascinat-
ing overlap of sea, land and sky—a fly-
way with millions of birds, and, remark-
ably, billions of people.
Now, for the first time, we are moving
towards an institutional framework for
this flyway. At a meeting held in Delhi
earlier this month by the UN’s Conven-
tion on Migratory Species, 11 participat-
ing countries of the Central Asian Fly-
way (CAF) agreed in principle to set up a
secretariat or coordinating office for the
CAF in India, a prominent country on
the flyway.
For a flyway like the CAF, there are
obvious challenges ahead. One is indus-
try pressure to develop coastlines and
Pet care on a budget
WIZARD OF PAWS
Adopting, grooming
your pet at home—
there are many ways
to own a pet and not
break the bank
Nameeta Nadkarni
B
ringing a pet home requires dedi-
cation, both in terms of time and
financial resources. The cost of pet
ownership, however, shouldn’t stop you.
There are many affordable ways to care
for a pet without compromising their
health or happiness.
Adopting a pet is a good alternative to
buying one. Adopt from a reputable shel-
ter or an NGO—many of their animals are
already vaccinated, spayed or neutered,
saving you money on those things.
If you decide to purchase a pet and
have a budget in mind, thoroughly study
the breed you are considering. Certain
pets are naturally more expensive to
maintain than others. For instance, large
dogs may need more food, more expen-
sive medications and may incur more
veterinary costs. Compared to short-
haired breeds, toy breeds with long hair
will require more coat maintenance. In
the long term, breeds with a genetic pre-
disposition to specific illnesses will need
more spent on their treatment.
Before buying a pet, do some research
on the breeder and choose a puppy or kit-
ten that is more than 55 days old. You
may need to seek medical attention right
away for sick puppies or kittens within a
few days of bringing them home if they
are younger than that or were raised in a
crowded environment.
The most cost-effective method of
raising a pet is to be proactive in your
preventive efforts. Make arrangements
for routine veterinary care. These
include yearly physicals, immunisations
and prophylactic drugs like flea and tick
repellents. Setting aside money for these
in advance will help you stay within your
budget. It is important to vaccinate pets
against serious illnesses that can be costly
This PDF was uploade To Telegram channel_ LBS Newspaper platform (https://t.me/LBSNEWSPAPER) @LBSNEWSPAPER
Bar-headed geese in the National Capital Region; and (right) Bar-headed geese and godwits on the Odisha coastline.
shorelines into built infrastructure like
ports and power plants. The other is the
pressure to share land and water in more
unlikely places. Such as cities like Mum-
bai, Delhi and Kolkata, which get hun-
dreds of thousands of migratory birds in
their forests and wetlands. This makes
the challenge to the CAF primarily one
of sustainability—how we share (and
spare) our coasts, cities and countryside
for wildlife will be a key challenge.
The final, undeniable aspect is that of
climate change. Studies show migratory
birds are facing more challenges than
ever before. Breeding grounds in the
Arctic are getting warmer, which means
birds start their migration sooner. A
study by Arpit Deomurari, Ajay Sharma,
Dipankar Ghose and Randeep Singh,
published this year, modelled predic-
tions for over 1,000 Indian bird species.
They found that due to climate change,
over 60% of the birds will shift north-
Medium Talk
Bathe the pet yourself every two weeks.
to treat. Locating low-cost veterinary
clinics that provide discounted services
is another way to save money on pet care.
These might provide inexpensive basic
services, including immunisations, spay/
neuter operations and regular checkups.
You can ask your neighbourhood animal
welfare organisation for recommenda-
tions.
Although purchasing pet insurance
may initially seem like an extra cost,
doing so will end up saving you money as
it can cover the cost of unforeseen veteri-
nary expenses. Before choosing one,
compare the options available.
When buying supplies, prioritise
necessities over luxuries. Before spend-
ing money on toys or extras, you should
be sure you can afford to give your pet the
three necessities of life: food, water and
shelter. Contrary to common opinion, a
balanced home-cooked diet is far more
expensive than commercially packaged
food. So, if money is tight, you can opt for
packaged food from a reputed food
brand. If money is scarce, think about
buying food and supplies in bulk. Make
sure you have adequate storage for this.
The cost of professional grooming can
be high but you can cut costs by doing
your pet’s grooming yourself. This can
FIRST
wards, and over 50% of the birds will
lose part of their range. Other studies
say that overall, birds will need more
sites to rest and feed in.
Perhaps what is needed most is to
re-imagine open or wild spaces, not just
for us, but for wildlife that follows a dif-
ferent clock—a migratory, seasonal one,
whose face is thrown wide open to cli-
matic change.
A year after my Odisha visit, I was in a
fallow field in Haryana. Visibility was
low—a smear of smog and woodsmoke
swathed the cold air. Yet birds don’t
mind the cold and we knew there was a
group of tall, whitish birds nearby.
Their outline was impossibly elegant,
almost fragile-looking, with toothpick-
like legs and curving necks—like wax
statues preserved by the cold. We knew
they were cranes. But which ones?
Could they be Sarus cranes—resident
Indian birds, the tallest among all flying
ISTOCKPHOTO
include giving them a bath yourself once
every two weeks, learning to cut their
nails, and brushing their fur regularly. A
lot of information is available online to
assist you in learning how to efficiently
groom your pet; grooming supplies like
brushes and nail clippers can be pur-
chased for comparatively little money.
Similarly, walk the dog yourself instead
of paying a dog walker.
Finally, there are many DIY projects
that can help you save money. For
instance, you can craft your own cat toys
out of common household things, make
a cardboard scratching post or construct
a cat tree out of cheap materials—what
matters is that the pet is stimulated men-
tally and physically. Instead of spending
money on pet bedding, use old blankets
or towels. Additionally, you can create
your own pet bed by stuffing a worn-out
pillowcase or T-shirt with blankets.
By adopting from a shelter, planning
for routine veterinary care, focusing on
necessities and getting creative with DIY
projects, you can provide a loving home
for your pet without breaking the bank.
Nameeta Nadkarni is a practising vet-
erinary soft tissue surgeon and pet blogger
from Mumbai.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY NEHA SINHA
avians, who dance during their court-
ship and famously mate for life? Crawl-
ing gently ahead, our knees shaking in
the cold, we surmised the birds were, in
fact, Common cranes.
In a second, the fallow field had
turned into a place of warm, exciting
possibility—these birds had come from
the Palearctic and they trusted this spot
enough to visit and feed in. We could
not get very close. On seeing our out-
line, the cranes would retreat, their
flouncy backs quivering. We watched
from a distance and I thought about
how India would seem so much louder
than other places on the flyway.
Not far from that spot, we also saw
Sarus cranes. They behaved differently:
tossing their heads, sashaying regally in
the field, unconcerned about our pres-
ence. It was magical, given the way birds
transform flat and unidimensional pla-
ces into fizzy and multilayered ones.
The ‘karigar’ as a partner
Some brands are now
turning facilitators,
promoting the artisan’s
business and treating
them as partners
Reem Khokhar
T
he ajrakh handblock-print dress
arrives in a linen bag. An informa-
tion card tucked inside has photo-
graphs of the artisan, Ibrahim Khatri, and
the Delhi-based tailors, Satinder and
Sadiq, behind the outfit. QR codes lead to
a web page, where one can read about
Ibrahim, the ajrakh craft passed down
through his family, and his love for chai.
We learn that Satinder, a workaholic,
unwinds by playing badminton with his
children, while Sadiq enjoys Ludo and
ghazals. The card says ₹675 of the dress’
₹1,599 retail price goes directly to them.
The website of the brand, Tamarind
Chutney, also provides a breakdown of
the amount spent on packaging, trans-
portation, company overheads, etc.
“We source fabric directly from arti-
sans, pay our tailors above market rate
wages, and share products’ price break-
down on our website. This keeps us
accountable to fair wages,” says Tama-
For some months of the year, bird
migration turns a local spot into an
international one. You don’t exactly
know the combination of what you will
find—gull, wader, crane, warbler—but it
is there. Seeing a wetland or forest full
of the unfamiliar sounds of a foreign
bird is believing that all places are, in
fact, connected. It is knowing that birds
find places for themselves year after
year, negotiating a mosaic of traffic
crossings, mountains, cities and a
changing climate.
Migration is also about transforma-
tion. A spot favoured by migratory
birds is a spot that will transform from
a dull-looking place in the June heat to
a raucous, lively place in the winter
cold. The birds also come right up to
our houses, though we might not know
it. Tiny warblers, chirruping like
insects, flit on our balconies and hide
in creepers. They come from Central
Asia—and can easily be heard if you
know what to look out for. Each year, I
watch a mango tree swell with visiting
warblers in December. The slim, dark
green leaves shiver with the excite-
ment of frisky little sprites—bird-bod-
ies that are never still. Migratory war-
blers seem to be lit with a fire that is
absolutely alien to our slow bodies—a
fire that makes it possible for a bird
weighing about 6g to cross countries.
The question now is if we will allow
this fabulous, fierce fire to thrive. Last
year, the world negotiated the Kun-
ming-Montreal Global Biodiversity
More than small talk
COURTESY RANGSUTRA
rind Chutney’s chief design officer and
co-founder, Charanya Shekar. They also
provide the contact details of their arti-
san partners to interested consumers. It’s
an interesting change in perspective
from ownership to facilitator, promoting
the artisan’s business and treating them
as partners, not labour.
This is rare transparency in an indus-
try that has been historically exploitative
and dismissive of the skilled craftspeople
who create the products that make
brands profitable. India’s textile industry
was worth $223 billion (around ₹18.3 tril-
lion) in 2021, according to the market
data resource platform Statista, and
employs 45.5 million, including 3.52mil-
lion handloom workers.
While pioneers like Fabindia and
Anokhi have long been focused on
empowering craftspeople, more Indian
brands are now forging meaningful part-
nerships with artisans. For, “while there
is a billion-dollar market for craft prod-
ucts, India’s artisans earn less than 5% of
the final price of finished goods due to
exploitation by intermediaries, unfair
wages, limited innovation in designs, and
unorganised working conditions,” says
Tanvi Bikhchandani, Tamarind Chut-
ney’s CEO and co-founder.
Sonica Sarna, founder and CEO of the
sustainability consulting company Son-
ica Sarna Design, began her career with
Saturday, 20 May 2023
MuMbai 03
Framework: new goals under the UN
Convention on Biological Diversity
that the world agrees will keep our
wildlife, and planet, safe. One of them
states that by 2030, 30% of land and
water that is of importance to biodi-
versity should be conserved in a way
that ensures connectivity.
Understanding connectivity is key to
saving migratory wildlife. This would
mean valuing, and paying for keeping,
land use amenable for sustainable and
wildlife-friendly uses—such as provid-
ing a premium for produce that comes
from a field with Common cranes. It
would mean finding institutional fund-
ing and focus for the nameless wetlands
that dot our lives. It would also mean
spreading the word—land and water
need steering committees and commu-
nity champions that keep growth
responsible, not reckless. Coastlines
need visions not just for people but also
zoning just for nature. All our wetlands
need operational state boards that iden-
tify and manage wetlands as places with
water, and not as land that should be
built over.
For all those who believe in a chord of
oneness with nature, migration offers
the full, thrilling song: We are all con-
nected, and your local field, park or
pond is singing along with you.
Neha Sinha is a conservation biologist
and author of Wild And Wilful: Tales Of
15 Iconic Indian Species. Views
expressed are personal.
COURTESY TAMARIND CHUTNEY
Women embroidery artisans; and
(above) an artisan specialising in
Sanganer block-printing.
the US market and quickly realised how
exploitative the fashion industry was. “It
was conflicting and troublesome to work
with global brands with billion-dollar
valuations on the one hand, and with the
talented artisans and factory workers
who lived at the poverty line in slums, on
the other,” she says. Her consultancy
helps artisans with marketing, quality
control and products for the interna-
tional market, providing links to brands
and educating fashion companies on
equitable artisan relationships.
Sumita Ghose, founder and managing
director of the artisan-owned craft com-
pany Rangsutra, says: “The whole system
sees them as beneficiaries. This needed
to change to them becoming owners.”
Rangsutra began in 2006 with 1,000
Rajasthani artisans investing ₹1,000
each, while Ghose took loans from family
and friends to match the ₹10 lakh, start-
ing with sales through Fabindia stores,
forging other partnerships and selling
under their own brand name. Rangsu-
tra’s 2,000 artisan shareholders are also
producers and decision makers partici-
pating in the supply chain.
Yet, Bikhchandani observes, most
brands still do not think about the poten-
tially exploitative conditions in the sup-
ply chain. “Most brands work with the
craft, but not the craftsperson.”
Reem Khokhar is a Delhi-based writer.
 04 Saturday, 20 May 2023
MuMbai
Source
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Things to watch, read, hear, do—and other curated experiences from the team
bRING ON THE ONION ‘SAMOSA’
he one good thing about being
T on our apartment complex’s
“connect” WhatsApp group is
the posts by home chefs. Last week, I
tasted Andhra onion samosas for the
first time, from Akula’s Kitchen in the
neighbouring society. I don’t enjoy
the potato filling in the north Indian
samosa—the only thing that tempts
me are the three crispy corners. But if
you deconstruct a samosa, is it still a
samosa? The samosa I can have in its
entirety is the Bengali shingara. Onion
samosas can be added to that list now;
they reminded me of the sambusas
with minced-meat filling I had in
Petra, Jordan. The outer covering was
flaky, crisp like a phyllo pastry, and the
filling of sautéed onions had a hint of
natural sweetness. They were gar-
nished with fried whole green chillies;
no garish green or orange chutneys. I
am ordering puliogare (tamarind rice)
next. —Nipa Charagi
This PDF was uploade To Telegram channel_ LBS Newspaper platform (https://t.me/LBSNEWSPAPER) @LBSNEWSPAPER
HOW TO LOUNGE
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FIRST
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Nothing beats the
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BAG OR BOX?
adidas x Gucci Golf Ball Case
Bringing together functionality and luxury, this unique
golf ball case, made of blue leather, is a collector’s
item. Available on Gucci.com; $5,100
SWIM TIME
Versace Slashed One-piece Swimsuit
The “slashed” trend has reached
swimwear, like this one-piece swimsuit
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LOUNGE LOVES
THE GOOdNESS OF MANGO
o me, desserts are synonymous with
T chocolate. However, my mother doesn’t
take this pursuit of chocolate too kindly.
Which is why, this Mother’s Day, I decided to
leave my sweet obsession aside and indulge
her in something different. I ordered the
almond mango cheesecake from Love and
Cheesecake, an artisanal dessert and cake
brand with branches in Mumbai and the
National Capital Region. I took a bite of the
cake gingerly but ended up taking several
servings. Mango chunks make up the centre
of this cake, which is layered with a mango
frangipane base, creamy mascarpone frosting
and sprinkled with pistachios and almond
flakes—a beautiful play of textures and
flavours. —Avantika Bhuyan
CUSHION COMFORT
orking from home can be physically
W taxing. Especially for those who
have to sit long hours. To make sure
my tailbone and hips don’t feel the brunt of it
all, I recently purchased the Frido Ultimate
Socket Seat Cushion, which is made of
orthopaedic memory foam and covered with a
neat airflow mesh cover. The cushion has a
wedge design which ensures correct posture
when you sit. It also has two smartly placed
cut-outs that ensure your hip bone and
tailbone don’t feel stressed. It comes with a
nice little handle on the side that lets you
carry the cushion anywhere. You can use it for
your office chair or even your car seat. The
mesh cover is washable, so it’s also easy to
maintain.
—Nitin Sreedhar
PRINT
MANIA
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Trousers
Make a
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during your
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to the
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RUN CLUB
Compiled by Pooja Singh.
THE LIGHTER SIDE OF HANNAH
n their new Netflix show, Something
I Special, Hannah Gadsby insists that
they will keep things light and feel-
good. “I owe you one,” Gadsby says.
And though this feels like an elaborate
set-up, the darkest part of the show is
probably dead rabbits. Gadsby, most
famous for the searing Nanette in
2019, spends most of their new show
talking about their marriage to pro-
ducer “Jenno”. Gadsby fans would
understand the significance of this—
for a person who delved deep into
their trauma and what they suffered
for being queer, to now being giddily
happy in marriage, this is no regular
comedy show. Gadsby’s storytelling is
on point, as always, and they blithely
subvert audience expectations of any-
thing dark, proving that they don’t
need trauma to make good comedy.
The jokes are connected beautifully at
the end.
—Dakshayani Kumaramangalam
STREAM OF
STO R I E S
RAJA SEN
Bittersweet
‘MasterChef ’
The late Jock Zonfrillo.
n an early episode of the new season of MasterChef Australia (Disney+ Hot-
I star), there are, suddenly, too few contestants. This is no competitive cull.
This show, quite frankly, is too darned nice to even think of axing a bunch
of contestants en masse, even newcomers we are yet to know and love. A cov-
id-19 outbreak during production forced them to film an episode with eight
competitors missing—a significant setback. Lead host Jock Zonfrillo delivers
the news, looks at the 10 contestants in front of him, flashes a smile and says,
“The show must go on.”
The irony is horrid.
Zonfrillo, 46, died just before the broadcast of MasterChef Australia’s 15th
season. The season had been filmed months ago and so despite his tragic
death, here we are now, tuning in to see him alive and enthused every night,
like light shining on us from a extinguished star.
The consumption of competitive reality shows involves a conspiracy of pre-
tending between makers and audience, one where we watch episodes pro-
duced weeks ago and cheer for them—with a sort of self-perpetuating
latency—as if we were watching live sport (just last year, I wrote about how
MasterChef Australia is my Indian Premier League.)
The very mention of Zonfrillo makes me think of worry beads. A tall Scot
proud of his appetite, Zonfrillo was an experienced chef with an authoritative
air, swiftly marking him as top dog alongside fellow hosts food critic Melissa
Leong and former MasterChef winner Andy Allen. This fraternal energy was
contrasted, somewhat, by Zonfrillo constantly holding beads in hand—even
while wearing a kilt for a special episode. Worry beads, called kombolói by the
Greeks and Cypriots, may resemble rosary/prayer beads but they are more for
focus than spirituality. Consider them ancient fidget-spinners, if you will.
Zonfrillo told viewers they helped him focus, helped him cope.
“Are you ready for the first clap of the season?” Zonfrillo opens season 15
wearing a powder-blue three-piece suit, clutching bright yellow beads. His
passing casts a shadow over the episode.
There is, as ever, much to like but some
bits feel particularly unsettling, as
when Zonfrillo reacts to a contest-
ant making ramen with chicken STREAMING
feet and gizzards. “What a time to TIP OF THE WEEK
be alive,” he gushes, smacking The title ‘Working: What We Do
his lips. It’s hard not to sigh. All Day’ sounds cartoonishly dull
This season features contest- but this four-part Netflix series—
ants like Larissa, who is proud of narrated by Barack Obama—is
her Russian-Ukrainian heritage
(“it’s a tricky world,” she says, and
special guest Jamie Oliver is quick
an insightful and well-made
take on “What makes a
good job good?” It
to add that “food brings people works.
together”). One of the twists— in a sea-
son themed “secrets and surprises”—is the
return of season 13 contestant Brent Draper
who, overwhelmed by anxiety, had a meltdown in the MasterChef kitchen and
could not cook further. It was Zonfrillo who sat and counselled Draper two
seasons ago, commending him on the courage it takes to draw a line to protect
his mental health, and now Draper is back, seemingly more sorted, and in line
to win.
That’s the kind of show MasterChef Australia has always been, a great and
conflict-free television embrace. It isn’t simply a show about food or cooking.
When I was introduced to it many years ago by a TV producer friend who
gushed about its production and storytelling, I was struck by its decidedly
un-American lack of drama. Going against reality show dogma, this show
prizes camaraderie over catfights. This feel-good spirit of the show, where
rival contestants pitch in to help one another, is more wholesome than the
meals that they cook—which we don’t get to taste.
That affability begins with the hosts. Initially (and, frankly, unforgettably)
hosted by Matt Preston, Gary Mehigan and George Calombaris, the show
always felt to me like a kind of Top Gear, a hangout show where we saw
superbly photographed cars (that we didn’t get to drive), except with food.
MasterChef Australia is extremely well-produced television and your own
interest in cooking—or lack thereof—doesn’t get in the way of bingeing on the
series and picking favourites you feel far too strongly about (remember what I
said about pretending that it’s sport?).
The warning that must accompany MasterChef Australia is that you should
never watch it on an empty stomach. The series celebrates indulgence to such
a level that you are best advised to watch after or during dinner, not hungrily
and with food-delivery apps at your behest.
That, I guess, is why it feels strange to have lost Jock Zonfrillo. He wasn’t
someone whose career I followed, he wasn’t my favourite MasterChef host,
and I wasn’t aware of his troubled life—or that he started selling his own line
of worry beads once they got noticed on the show. Yet, watching a new season
where he unfailingly ends the episodes by encouraging contestants—and
viewers—to “put your feet up and be kind to each other”, I realise I miss him.
The fact that we sat down with his show at mealtimes, that he peppered our
dinner with dad-jokes, all that makes this loss feel oddly personal. Go well,
Jock. We may not have known you but we broke bread with you.
Raja Sen is a screenwriter and critic. He has co-written Chup, a film about
killing critics, and is now creating an absurd comedy series.
@rajasen

CULT
FRICTION
SANDIP
ROY
U
was a friend from school.
Whenever he called the land-
line at our house and my mother
picked up and asked who was calling, he
would say, “This is his friend speaking.
U.”
Sometimes he needed notes from a
class he had missed. Sometimes he had
questions about a looming examination.
We were not close friends. We didn’t
hang out together, go to movies or
attend each other’s birthdays. But we
were friends.
Bondhu. That became his name in our
house.
Over the years, we lost touch. And
then, through the miracle of social
media, school friends found each other
again. Someone set up the mandatory
school alumni WhatsApp group. Some-
one tracked down U and added him to
the group.
“Remember U?” I asked my family.
“Oh yes,” my mother said. “Bondhu bol-
chi (This is his friend speaking).”
Recently, it was U’s birthday. The
usual deluge of birthday messages start-
ing flooding the group.
“I haven’t heard from him in a while,”
I told another friend. “I hope he’s okay.”
U sometimes shared, perhaps even
over-shared, his health problems in the
group. My friend went and checked his
Facebook page and discovered that our
bondhu had died last August.
No one knew in a group we had
grandly named Friends Forever. Some-
one tried his number. It was switched
off.
Then everyone started scrolling back
through their messages to find their last
interaction with him. A happy new year
message, some medical advice, a doc-
tor’s appointment. But there was little
LIVING ON A THIN LINE:
KANU BEHL ON ‘AGRA’
Uday Bhatia
uday.b@htlive.com
K
anu Behl’s first film as
director, Titli, a searing
portrait of an east Delhi
family, premiered at the
Cannes Film Festival in
2014 and released in India in 2015. Since
then, he has been working on his second
feature, Agra, co-written with Atika Cho-
han—Behl’s inventive, vitriolic short,
Binnu Ka Sapna, released in 2019. Agra is
now ready and will also premiere at Can-
nes, part of the Directors’ Fortnight sec-
tion at the festival, which starts today.
Agra is a difficult film to describe and a
harrowing one to watch. It begins with a
hallucination and continues like a fever
dream, shoving aside the pieties of polite
arthouse cinema. Guru (Mohit Agarwal) is
a young man on the brink, ostensibly dat-
ing someone but intensely repressed,
both sexually and emotionally. He lives in
a multistoreyed house with his mother,
his father and his father’s mistress—each
one bitter and angling for power. He
dreams of a room on the terrace for him-
self but thwarted desires threaten to
destroy the shaky edifice of his life.
Lounge speaks to Kanu Behl about the
long gestation of this project, the invent-
ive sound design and the personal risks he
had to take to understand his characters.
Edited excerpts:
You have been working on ‘Agra’ for
a while. Was it the kind of project that
demanded time or was getting it
made particularly challenging?
There were two major difficulties. One
I knew the moment I started: Where will
you get funding for a film like this in India?
The other, more interesting roadblock is
an unconscious one I woke up to in the
middle of writing, to deal with the fear of
making a film like this myself.
After Titli released in India in 2015, I
truly got into Agra. I had the germ of the
idea. I wrote a couple of drafts where I
was a little scared—I was probably not
writing what I really wanted to. After
about a year of writing and two or three
drastically different drafts, I was at the
Three Rivers residency in Italy. My men-
tor was Molly Stensgaard, who edits for
This PDF was uploade To Telegram channel_ LBS Newspaper platform (https://t.me/LBSNEWSPAPER) @LBSNEWSPAPER
The loneliness that’s hard to admit
Perhaps the reason new cafés keep springing up every other day is
that they are selling an antidote to loneliness alongside the lattes
most of us knew about his personal life.
At one time, U too had posted a flurry of
messages on the group, sometimes a
selfie in a mall, sometimes seeking
health advice from the doctors in the
group, sometimes just a Durga Puja
message. But busy with our own lives,
none of us had noticed his silence on the
group for months.
The daily avalanche of WhatsApp
forwards, racy jokes and the occasional
political arguments had created an illu-
sion of connection between us. We had
not noticed a U-shaped hole in our
conversations because for the most
part these were not conversations, this
was just the white noise of our lives.
Sometimes I was hard-pressed to
remember who it was whom we were
wishing Happy Birthday. But like
sheep I followed the leader and wished
Happy Birthday anyway.
In some ways, this drove home for me
“the epidemic of loneliness” in an ever
more connected world that the US sur-
geon general Vivek Murthy was talking
about in his book, Together: The Healing
Power Of Human Connection In A Some-
times Lonely World. Loneliness can
affect our health profoundly. A famous
meta-analysis compared the risk of lon-
eliness and weak social networks to
smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
Murthy said, “If you think about how
much we put into curbing tobacco use
and obesity, compared to how much
effort and resources we put into
addressing loneliness, there’s no com-
parison.”
Loneliness is not new. People could
be acutely lonely even while embedded
in a bustling joint family. What is new,
though, is that this “epidemic of loneli-
ness” is happening at a time when we
are more technologically connected
than ever before.
In an April 2022 article, The New York
Times described the pandemic as a two-
year “experiment in loneliness” for New
York City—“nine million people siloed
with smartphones and 24/7 home deliv-
ery, cut off from the places where they
used to gather.” Those two years have
passed. Cities like New York have
Lars von Trier. On the fourth or fifth day,
she asked me, why are you making this
film? I was a little taken aback and said I
want to do a piece about repression and
sexuality in India. She asked, then why
are you not doing it? That really made me
take a step back, ask myself what I was
truly feeling and what was the impulse
for not making the film.That proved to be
a key breakthrough.
Around October-November 2016 is
when the film really started taking shape
and I started writing something closer to
what the film is now. By early 2017, we had
the first draft. We got Cinémas du monde
(a French grant for foreign feature films)
just after that, so 40% of the funding was in
place. I always knew the other 60% would
be the problem. I went around town but
no one wanted to look at it. Two years
went by like this. It was in 2019 that I
finally found collaborators who were on
THINK
The buzz of life in a café is reassuring.
reopened for business. But the shadow
of those two years remains not as a
nightmare from our past but as a
glimpse into our future.
The discussion around loneliness has
often focused on the industrialised
West. Britain, for example, announced a
minister for loneliness in 2014; this was
followed by one in Japan. In India, we
have stock images of loneliness—the
grandfather sitting alone in a room lit by
a fluorescent light watching television.
Or perhaps the aged lady sitting in an
old-age home listening to the radio, the
one who never has visitors. Or the
heart-breaking portrayal of Miss Stone-
ham in Aparna Sen’s 1981 film, 36 Chow-
ringhee Lane—the elderly school-
teacher who opens her heart and home
out to her old student and her boy-
friend, only to realise the young couple
were never interested in her company.
They had just needed a place for some
romantic privacy.
We could empathise with Miss Stone-
the same page.
I shot the film in June-July 2019. Then
everything shut down because of the pan-
demic. And we took some time with post
(production) because it’s a difficult film
with a difficult character operating on a
very thin line. I wanted to take time to edit
the film.
What was the germ of the idea?
I would say it was more a very strong
feeling within me that I had carried for a
few years—growing up, in my adolescent
years, going to college in Delhi, and some
of the early years in Kolkata. I was wonder-
ing why people don’t choose to address
sexuality, why there isn’t more conversa-
tion in our cinema about that. That com-
bined with my own feeling about sexuality
and how I had been able or unable to
express it in those years. A lot of what you
see in the film is real-life stories I have
seen happen around me.
ham’s loneliness but we didn’t think of
middle-aged busy professionals as
being lonely. I didn’t think of the people
in our Friends Forever WhatsApp
group as being lonely.
It’s a loneliness that is hard to admit
to because it feels like a weakness, a fail-
ure. Even studies around loneliness reg-
ularly conflate living alone with loneli-
ness. A 2021 Ananta Centre/Facebook/
Aspen Institute study on Loneliness In
India by Kristine Gloria mentions that
in 2004, India reported 4.9 million peo-
ple who lived alone and felt lonely. The
study does admit living alone does not
always correlate to loneliness. I know
people who insist they are completely
content to live alone and watch Korean
dramas on the iPad. On the other hand,
after my grandmother died, I think my
grandfather was very lonely, even
though he lived with all of us. When I
think back now, I do not know what he
did with his day after he had finished
reading the newspaper. I could spend
A still from ‘Agra’; and
(right) Kanu Behl during the
making of the film.
I went into a lot of
sex chat rooms, sometimes
posing as women,
sometimes as men, to
see how people were
expressing their secret lives.
ISTOCKPHOTO
hours with my grandmother, scribbling
in her accounts books, lying on her mat-
tress with all my toys. I never had that
connection with my grandfather. After
she died, he was physically well taken
care of but he slowly faded away from
my world.
Grandfather, we thought, needed a
hobby to keep himself busy. Loneliness
amidst busy-ness is uncharted territory
for most of us. There was a point when
after working from home for years, I
would need to go and sit in a café and
work, just to feel a sense of connection
to the world, one that was not mediated
through technology. I knew I felt anx-
ious. I didn’t know I was lonely. I didn’t
know you could be busy and lonely at
the same time.
My to-do list was a page long. Every
time I crossed something off, I felt a
sense of minor achievement. But my
busy-ness was about emails I needed to
write, Zoom calls I needed to attend,
WhatsApp messages I needed to
Director Kanu Behl
discusses the challenges
of making his second
feature, ‘Agra’, premiering
at the Cannes Film
Festival this week
‘Agra’ is definitely recognisable as a
Kanu Behl film but where ‘Titli’ was a
slow burn, this one goes straight to 11.
For me, it’s about being able to serve
the film you are doing as truthfully as
possible. Titli was a coming-of-age story.
This is almost the opposite of that. When
I was writing Agra, I was wary of doing
something that othered the character. I
wanted to do this piece about sexual
repression but I had not experienced the
intensity and chaos of the life of a boy
who desperately wants some physical
connection. He doesn’t know how to
express himself but he’s looking for a
moment of truth.
I decided I would have to create that
experience for myself. And that comes
with the problem of staying safe, for your-
self and the people around you. I went
into a lot of sex chat rooms, sometimes
posing as women, sometimes as men, to
see how people were expressing their
secret lives. The more time I spent in
these rooms, I noticed that the complete
white noise you start to feel if you are
desiring that sort of connection and not
getting it for a very long time, it’s amped
up to 11. The more I started breathing in
that noise, the film started emerging from
there. So the amping up is my attempt to
take you to that place.
You favour a bold, almost over-
Saturday, 20 May 2023
MuMbai 05
respond to. But I realised I needed to
overhear the conversation next to me,
make up stories about the hushed argu-
ment a couple was having across the
way, look at someone’s salad and be
tempted to try it. I found that buzz of life
reassuring, like the hum of a refrigera-
tor on a quiet night. Perhaps that’s the
reason new cafés keep springing up
every other day. It’s not driven just by
Instagram influencers. They are selling
an antidote to loneliness alongside the
lattes. I just wish they would turn down
the muzak a notch.
This is not to diss technology. For
sure, technology has made it easier for
us to build connections. When my par-
ents went to England, they sent a tele-
gram to let the family know they had
arrived safely. In those days, trunk calls
had to be booked and saved for
momentous occasions like births and
deaths. Decades later, as a student in
the US, I remember waking up on jet-
lagged nights in a small university town
in the American Midwest, staring at the
silent streets outside and imagining my
family and friends going about their
day in India. I would count the days till
the weekend, when I could call home.
But at least I could call every week.
Now technology allows us to Zoom,
WhatsApp, Skype with friends and
family wherever they are and when-
ever we like as long as the internet gods
are willing.
But it also makes us lazy, allows us to
pretend that we are connected, that we
are paying attention.
As the flurry of RIPs replaced the
Happy Birthdays on our WhatsApp
group along with memories of U, a
friend remarked grimly that sooner or
later some latecomer scrolling through
the group without paying close atten-
tion would wish U a Happy Birthday.
And sure enough soon someone did.
Cult Friction is a fortnightly column
on issues we keep rubbing up against.
Sandip Roy is a writer, journalist and
radio host.
@sandipr
whelming sound design. There are
these factory-like sounds that really
make a particular scene with Guru.
Apart from the factory noise in that
scene, there’s a really high-pitched sound.
It’s the little thing that goes in your teeth
when you are in the chair at the dentist’s.
The idea was just to create a string of
really dissonant spaces. With the drones,
we try and give you a sense of the white
noise that he’s feeling—especially when
Mala (his girlfriend) appears, you hear the
noise. Slowly, the drones start blending
into his internal pain. In a critical scene
with Guru and Chhavi (his cousin), the
drone you hear is literally like he’s not
able to take the noise within himself any
more. In the final act of the film, there are
a lot of sharp sounds you find in the con-
struction space.
Did you rehearse a lot?
No, there was little rehearsal, just a lot of
character-building work. It’s more about
taking the character that you are playing
from Day 1 in their lives to the point where
they start the film, so you know them as
intimately as possible, so that when we are
shooting, the actor is the best person to
decide what that person is feeling. That
character needs to be lived fully by the
actor. Most of the stuff in the workshops is
designed towards arriving at the point
where you start the film.
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 06 Saturday, 20 May 2023
MuMbai
BREAKING THE
‘NORTH INDIAN’
STEREOTYPE
Chefs are going
beyond ‘chhole’ and
‘paneer’ to showcase
the diversity of
flavours from
northern India
Avantika Bhuyan
avantika.bhuyan@htlive.com
O
ne of my biggest peeves is
eateries grouping cuisines
from Kashmir, Punjab,
Uttar Pradesh, Punjab,
Uttarakhand, Himachal
Pradesh and Delhi under the broad
umbrella of “north Indian” food. After
performing lip service to some of these
regions by including pindi chhole, dal
Moradabadi and rogan josh on the menu,
they end up serving the same old paneer
butter masala, butter chicken and dal
makhani.
Over the years, the stereotype of the
“north Indian eatery” has taken root
across the country. It usually has ornate,
dimly-lit interiors, tables set with copper
plates and tumblers and ghazals playing in
the background. But the diversity of fla-
vours that marks the culinary landscape of
the north has been missing.
For the longest time, only a handful of
restaurants, such as the Indian Accent in
Delhi and Ziya at The Oberoi, Mumbai,
would innovate with regional flavours
from Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and
other states in their modern Indian
menus. Now many more restaurants,
including stand-alone ones, coming up in
metros are focusing on the tapestry of fla-
vours from the north. In the past few
months itself, several such eateries have
Those East Indians and their cooking code
OUR
D A I LY
BREAD
SAMAR
HALARNKAR
A
fter passing the joggers and
walkers promenading beside the
mangroves of tony Carter Road
in Bandra, Mumbai, my 13-year-old
wrinkled her nose, raised her eyebrows
and gagged.
“Oh my god, what’s that?”
The promenade had disappeared and
rows of Bombay duck—strung between
poles—and masses of prawns carpeted
the sides of a now-narrow road, releas-
ing the collective, powerful odour dis-
tinctive to drying fish.
As her fingers squeezed her nostrils
shut, she saw little children playing
next to the drying prawns of Danda, as
the fishing village is known. “’Ow gan
dey do dat?” she groaned through her
pinched east Bengaluru nose.
To be fair, the aroma of dried fish can
punch you in the gut if you have not
been initiated and panic your nerves.
Even after 24 years, my wife will leave
the table when my mother and I are eat-
ing sukat (dried prawns) or dried bombil,
as the gelatinous lizardfish used by the
Konkan people is known locally.
Konkan cultures are dearly beloved
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opened up: Dhilli at The Oberoi, Delhi;
Pincode, also in the Capital, helmed by
Kunal Kapur; Nksha and Jhelum in Mum-
bai, to name some. They are demolishing
the perception of “north Indian” dishes as
heavy, cream-laden creations with lash-
ings of spice.
The refined, elegant offerings on these
new menus are informed by the memories
chefs and owners have of the region. At
Dhilli, for instance, chef Vineet Bhatia—a
Mumbai boy—reminisces about the time
spent in Delhi during visits to his nani’s
house, and as a student and an upcoming
chef. The menu showcases the rich culi-
nary heritage of Old Delhi, the flair of
Rajouri Garden and everything in
between. So you will find a samosa chaat
board and chatak chena chaat on his
menu, followed by a butter chicken, done
differently in a sigree (coal-fired stove) and
then enveloped in a sauce.
Pincode, which has opened in the Capi-
tal’s Civil Lines area after a successful
debut in Dubai, draws on Kapur’s travels
through India’s many pin codes and fam-
ily recipes, with innovative dishes such as
chaat hummus, dhokla chaat, pressure-
cooker chicken curry and lamb seekh tawa
masala. “As a child, I would accompany
my grandfather to Old Delhi to buy gro-
ceries in bulk from the wholesale market.
For me, the treat would be getting to eat
chhole bhature, rabri and chaat from some
of the iconic places. While doing that, I
would pick up on conversations between
my grandfather and the shopkeepers
about the quality of produce,” says Kapur.
Those conversations became the stepping
stones for the menu at Pincode.
One of their signature dishes is the Old
Delhi-style bread pudding, inspired by a
dish his mother would whip up in winter.
Kapur recalls her tucking in the children
and serving them doodh bread with sugar
sprinkled on top. “It would be cold and the
bread pieces would stick together. She
to me because one half of my family
sprang from across the state border in
Goa and I have a close connection to
their diverse communities, Hindu and
Christian. Indeed, my uncle once lived
in Bandra’s Chimbai, a goathan or vil-
lage that lies beyond the other end of
the Carter Road promenade. My
mother recollected how he loved the
music of its East Indian fisherfolk,
deeming it much livelier than their
mainstream Maharashtrian culture.
I was reacquainted with the joyous
culture of the East Indian Catholics this
summer when I spent 40 days in Mum-
bai. A major reason for this reacquaint-
ance was my friend, the writer and jour-
nalist Naresh Fernandes, whose mother
is East Indian. The term East Indian
emerged when Christian converts from
the original fishing villages that pre-
ceded Bombay (now Mumbai) named
themselves thus, after the East India
Company that once ran India and to
avoid confusion with Goans and other
Christian migrants.
The influence of the Portuguese, who
were responsible for converting both
Goans and East Indians, pervades both
communities. But a major point of dif-
ference between the East Indians and
the Goans is language. While their
music shares great similarities with
Goan Christian music—horns, guitars
and harmonies—infused though it
might be with some Konkani inflec-
tions, it is distinctively Marathi, albeit a
softer-sounding, romantic variety.
TASTE
would garnish this with a lot of tutti frutti.
I have tried to recreate that,” he says.
At Jhelum, which opened in Mumbai’s
Bandra locality this month, the owner,
24-year-old Abhay Chhabra, pays homage
to his grandfather, who was from Gujran-
wala, now in Pakistan. “The food and fla-
vours at Jhelum draw from the Peshawari-
Punjabi identity of my family,” says Chha-
bra. Since the food draws from towns and
cities along the river, you will find a smat-
tering of Kashmiri dishes on the menu,
along with hearty Punjabi preparations
like baingan masala. Chhabra sources all
the masalas from Kashmir and Punjab to
maintain the authentic taste.
Clearly, customers too are now
seeking a more regionally
diverse spread. Chef Vikram
Arora, who launched Nksha
with Pranav M. Rungta in
Churchgate, Mumbai, on 23
April, believes this is due to peo-
ple travelling a lot more within
the country. “For instance,
Varanasi is no longer merely
a pilgrimage centre. People
are going there to under-
stand heritage, culture and
to savour the food as well.
They want to see a good tama-
tar ki chaat being replicated at
East Indian Calde.
When Naresh sent me a video of an
East Indian festival organised by the
Mobai goathan panchayat—consisting
of food stalls, music awards and the
Mobai Premier League, the annual
“inter-goathan” football tournament—I
went down a rabbit hole of East Indian
music online, enjoying and forwarding
videos made by bands from the Mumbai
suburb of Vasai, an East Indian strong-
hold.
As recompense for not inviting me to
the festival in Bandra, Naresh sent me
The East Indian Cookery Book, as origi-
(clockwise from top, left)
Pincode, located in the Capital,
is helmed by Kunal Kapur;
‘sigree’ butter chicken ‘tikka’ at
Dhilli, The Oberoi, Delhi; and
‘nalli nihari’ at Nksha.
SAMAR HALARNKAR
nally compiled by Martin D. Fonseca,
assisted by Elfreda d’Almeida and
“members of the Ladies’ Sub-Commit-
tee, E. I. Cookery Book”, first published
by the Bombay East Indian Association
42 years ago.
Some pages from this masterpiece are
translated and reproduced from a Por-
tuguese recipe book first printed in
1900, when many East Indians—like the
Goans—knew Portuguese. A unique
feature is that no recipe is more than a
para long and its approach to cooking is
very much like my own.
their favourite restaurants,” he adds.
At Churchgate Hospitality Pvt. Ltd’s
Nksha, 80% of the dishes stay true to their
original taste; the rest are given a creative
twist by Arora. So, you will find tamatar ki
launji being paired with burrata in a ched-
dar cheese tart, truffle cheese kulcha, cof-
fee rasmalai and papdi chaat topped with
berries instead of the regular pomegran-
ate seeds. Among the originals are dishes
such as stuffed gucchi, a bater or quail
preparation and Dilli 6 wala mutton
korma. “A certain monotony had set in, at
least in Mumbai, when it came to north
Indian food. If people wanted some-
thing creative, they would have to
head to restaurants in five-star
hotels. The stand-alone eat-
ery culture, in this genre of
food, was very conven-
tional. We hope to
change that,” adds Arora.
Chefs believe there is so
much potential in every
state or region that you
could spend years
researching and still
touch only the tip of the
iceberg. For them, one
such destination is Delhi.
Its rich history—with
mentions in the Mahabharat,
“It should be remembered that a rec-
ipe is basically a pointer to a particular
preparation,” says the book. “But there
is an important ‘ingredient’ that is com-
mon to all recipes and which remain
unstated and that is, the personal touch,
the individual creativity—which is all
important for converting the simple
foods (sic) into ambrosial dishes, fit to be
set before a king.”
Amen to that.
Since many recipes call for that ubiq-
uitous East Indian ingredient, bottle
masala—home-made masala, distinc-
tively stored in beer bottles and, often,
unique to notoriously secretive fami-
lies—Naresh thoughtfully sent me a
packet, along with East Indian wedding
pickle.
The recipe for the calde, or soup, that
I made needed no bottle masala and was
delightfully vague, so I did whatever I
pleased. As I was making the calde, our
local baker in Bengaluru made poi,
Goan bread, for the first time. It was a
marriage made in heaven.
That same day, I unpacked gifts from
my own Konkan legacy—a dried Bom-
bay duck chutney powder produced in a
village not far from Murud, the ancestral
home of a branch of my mother’s family.
To my astonishment, the child—yes,
the same one who gagged at the drying
Bombay duck—opened the chutney
and started to eat it with dosa. “This is
yummmm,” she said, in the eloquent
manner of her generation. I scratched
my head. Redemption is a fine thing.
the seat of power for the Chauhan Rajputs,
the Delhi Sultanate and Mughals, followed
by the British and the government of
independent India—has left deep
imprints on its culinary heritage. Bhatia
hopes to celebrate all this at Dhilli, while
making this legacy accessible to the
younger generation.
“They would rather go out and have
burgers or pizza and completely disregard
their own food. I want to speak to this gen-
eration about food that is so complex and
flavourful that it can easily beat any other
cuisine around the world,” he states in an
email interview. To him, Delhi is so much
more than just chhole bhature.
While training as a chef in Delhi, one of
his most sought after dishes used to be
rajma chawal, which he would cook for
friends every alternate day. “I have cate-
gorised it as ‘Rajouri Garden’ in the menu,
as the ones you find there are absolutely
blissful,” reminisces Bhatia. The akhroti
tawa seekh is a take on the kebabs found in
the lanes of Jama Masjid and once a staple
at his home as a teatime snack. “The moti
ittar pulao from Nizamuddin was some-
thing that my team and I fell in love with.
A lot of the dishes on the menu are about
recreating experiences we enjoyed on the
streets in Delhi while connecting with the
locals,” he adds.
Over the past decade, ITC Hotels such
as Maurya and Sheraton have been offer-
ing in-depth sojourns of Delhi through
festivals and restaurants such as the Delhi
Pavilion (started in 2015). Now another
festival, The Dehlnavi Trail, has taken this
exploration up several notches by high-
lighting the city’s sub-cuisines—those
influenced by the Baniyas, Kayasthas,
Punjabis and Marwari traders, who have
made Delhi their home over the years.
The festival, which started in Delhi in
April, moved to Mumbai this month and
will travel to ITC properties in Bengaluru,
Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata between
June-September. It has been curated by
Manisha Bhasin, executive corporate chef,
ITC hotels, and chef Rais, who uses one
name. The chefs have been instrumental
in laying the foundation of Dehlnavi,
started as a banquet offering in 2005 and
integrated into the menu later, as a brand.
The Dehlnavi Trail meal starts with
Mohabbat ka Sharbat, which came into the
spotlight recently when politician Rahul
Gandhi savoured a glassful during a visit
to Old Delhi with actor-food writer Kunal
Vijaykar. Made with chunks of water-
melon, rose syrup and milk, it acts like a
palate cleanser between courses too. The
extensive meal features a chaat platter
comprising dahi gujiya, aloo tikki, papdi
chaat and more. Also interesting are the
silbatte ki shaami and the jackfruit haleem.
Other highlights include nihari with
malai paratha, kuni ki dal, with slow-
cooked Bengal grams and black lentils,
meha bharwan, or round gourd cooked in
light tomato and asafoetida gravy, and the
unique mirchi nimona pulao—a Basmati
rice preparation with whole gentle green
chillies stuffed with peas paste. “Our chefs
at ITC Hotels have been researching this
concept since 2005-06, starting with
1200 AD and going up to the post-Parti-
tion era. It was interesting to see how
members of certain communities picked
up nuances while working in the British
kitchens. That is how the chicken ishtoo
came into being. The Kayasthas brought
with them kofte and faux-meat dishes such
as dhokha keema. The Punjabis intro-
duced the tandoor and the kuni dal. Our
menu takes inspiration from all of these,”
says Bhasin.
It is this kind of nuanced discourse that
is helping to redefine the idea of what con-
stitutes “north Indian”.
EASt INdIAN CALdE
Serves 4
Ingredients
Half kg chicken with full legs (the origi-
nal calls for two chickens, six goat trot-
ters and an oxtail)
2 tbsp coriander seeds
2 cloves
1-inch piece cinnamon
5-6 peppercorns
1 tsp turmeric
8 pieces garlic, smashed
1 tsp ghee
Water
Salt to taste
Method
Cover the chicken in salted water, an
inch above the meat. Bring to a boil,
simmer for 60-70 minutes until the
chicken is falling off the bone. Debone.
Grind coriander seeds, cloves, cinna-
mon, peppercorns and turmeric to a
powder.
In a vessel, gently heat ghee, add the
garlic and sauté for a minute. Add the
ground masala, sauté for a minute. Add
chicken, then add the stock and simmer
for five minutes.
Our Daily Bread is a column on easy,
inventive cooking. Samar Halarnkar is
the author of The Married Man’s Guide
To Creative Cooking—And Other Dubi-
ous Adventures.
@samar11

The foldable device
market is heating up
Foldable smartphones are the fastest-growing category in an otherwise struggling market.
Samsung set the ball
rolling in 2019. Now,
foldable phones are
becoming more
mainstream. But what
about Apple?
Abhishek Baxi
oldable smartphones
F emerged as a breath of fresh
air a few years ago. By then,
glass, plastic and metal
slabs—generally indistin-
guishable from each other—were getting
boring, with iterative upgrades and little
innovation in chassis or form factor.
It was in 2019 that Samsung launched
the first Samsung Galaxy Fold, following
up with the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip the
following year. Huawei, too, launched its
maiden foldable smartphone—the Hua-
wei Mate X—in 2019 but issues in the US
(as well as other markets, including India),
where the company was accused of spying
for the Chinese government, meant that
the smartphone, and its subsequent itera-
tions, never launched outside China.
At the time, there were gen-
uine concerns about
the foldable
phone’s reliability
and durability.
And they were
prohibitively
expensive, costing
close to $2,000
REVIEW | INSTA360 FLOW MOBILE GIMBAL
A tiny, portable gimbal for steady, stylish shots
Equal parts feature-
packed, practical and
ingenious, the new Flow
is like Batman’s utility belt
for mobile gimbals
Tushar Kanwar
martphones have become veritable
S champions at stabilising video with
built-in optical and electronic image
stabilisation but in a world where polished
smartphone videos for social media have
become the norm, you just can’t beat the
smooth cinematic footage a mobile gim-
bal delivers.
You would probably have seen them at
weddings and live events, allowing video
crews, vloggers and influencers alike to
shoot jitter-free video without a big tripod
or dolly set-up. Brands like DJI and Zhi-
yun dominate this space but Insta360 is
bringing its 360-degree smarts to this seg-
ment with the new Flow (₹15,990).
The Flow is different from other gim-
bals in that it packs down small
(79.6x162.1x36mm) and light enough
(369g) to fit in a jacket pocket or a small
sling bag. It unfolds, powered on and
ready for use, in a single twist—portable
when collapsed, yet quick to deploy. The
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(around ₹1.6 lakh). Yet, despite concept
and showcase devices from a slew of
brands, for most people around the world,
Samsung was the only option for a folda-
ble smartphone.
All that is changing now. Foldable
smartphones are making their way to the
mainstream and more brands are coming
up with offerings. India now has options
from Oppo and Tecno, apart from Sam-
sung. Google’s Pixel Fold, announced
recently, is the latest sign that the Android
operating system is priming up for folda-
ble displays as well—though it’s not availa-
ble in India.
For foldable smartphones, at present
only a tiny fraction of the smartphone
business, are the fastest-growing category
in an otherwise struggling market. They
made up only 1% of smartphone ship-
ments in 2022 but their market share is
predicted to triple by 2027, accounting for
50 million units annually, according to the
research firm IDC.
THE PITCH
Foldable smartphones come with several
advantages, apart from the obvious larger
screen or the compactable form factor,
though there are a few downsides as well.
The obvious benefit
is the size. The
phone is mounted on to a metal clamp
which securely attaches magnetically to
the gimbal arm; the set-up is rated to han-
dle phones up to 300g in weight and 3.3
inches wide. For reference, I was able to fit
an Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max with a case.
There’s a Nothing-esque clear plastic
cover which shows off the battery and
some of the internal circuitry, an aesthetic
that sets the Insta360 apart from the fairly
staidly designed competition.
In keeping the overall size portable, the
handle is small for larger hands but there’s
a rubber sleeve for a better grip. Keeping
the battery pack in the arm of the gimbal
has allowed for some thoughtful design
elements, from tripod legs tucked into the
handle, to a 215mm extending selfie stick.
Be sure, though, to use the tripod legs on
a stable surface, preferably indoors, as any
significant movement or wind can unset-
tle the set-up. If you regularly want to go
hands-free outdoors, there’s a mount
thread on the bottom so you can attach it
to something more planted.
Connecting to your smartphone hap-
pens via the same Insta360 app we have
seen on the brand’s 360-degree action
cameras and pairing is quick and easy.
While you can control the gimbal
movement on the app, you can access
most features with the circular touch-sen-
sitive panel on the handle—swipe on the
panel to switch modes, use the jog wheel
to zoom in and out, use the buttons to start
SMART LIVING
“Fold” phones open up to a tablet-like
screen, making content consumption,
everyday productive work and multitask-
ing much more convenient, while the
“Flip” ones fold the display into half, mak-
ing them compact and easy to pocket.
You can do much more with the cam-
eras too: using the more powerful rear
cameras for selfies, using the external dis-
play as a viewfinder, or propping one up to
use as a tripod while clicking photographs.
The biggest concern about these devi-
ces has been the display crease and the
folding hinge. While earlier generation
devices struggled to allay worries, current
iterations offer some confidence. Progres-
sive upgrades have worked on the crease
—the end goal is to make the crease almost
invisible in everyday use.
There’s no denying that foldable
phones are quite expensive. But if you are
fine with splurging to experience the
future of smartphones, you might want to
grab these premium, next-generation
devices. The shiny devices have often
fallen short of rational arguments, since a
₹30,000-40,000 phone meets the needs
of most people, but those who appreciate
technological breakthroughs and innova-
tion take the plunge anyway. Early adopt-
ers, of course, help refine the products, the
supply chain and the ecosystem as well, so
the technology permeates down the value
chain with time.
OPTIONS ON THE TABLE
While Google isn’t launching the Pixel
Fold in India, there are quite a few options
already in the market.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Galaxy Z
Flip 4 continue to remain the primary
considerations for anyone looking to buy
The Flow has fantastic software and AI tracking.
recording or switch from portrait to land- like footage.
scape or selfie to rear camera, and a joy- These are targeted
stick to control where the phone is point- mainly at the casual
ing. The only other control is a trigger but- creator, as the app sug-
ton on the back to activate subject gests steps to get the shots
tracking and flip the phone 180 degrees. right, leaving you to focus on the
There are a number of shooting modes. framing and capture. The app helped me action mode of the iPhone 14 Pro Max.
The auto mode uses AI (Artificial Intelli- get dolly zoom cinematic effect right on
gence) tracking to keep the subject cen- the first shot—and that’s saying some- help edit shots, suggesting the parts to use.
tred. The Follow and Pan-Follow modes thing.
control the pan, tilt and roll and the FPV
(first-person view) mode mimics drone- excellent, particularly for framing you allow you to capture time lapses and 360-
Saturday, 20 May 2023
MuMbai 07
THE WEEK IN TECH
a foldable smartphone but they don’t
come cheap—the Fold starts at ₹1,54,999,
the Flip at ₹₹89,999. Now in their fourth
iteration, both devices have matured over
the years and ironed out the teething
issues visible till the second generation.
Then there’s Oppo. Launched in India
recently, the Oppo Find N2 Flip wants to
1
go against the Samsung Flip with exquisite APPLE PREVIEWS NEW ACCESSIBILITY FEATURES
build quality and almost no crease on the
display—and the same price. On 16 May, Apple announced that new software features for cogni-
Then came Tecno. The affordable tive, speech and vision accessibility will be available on iOS and
smartphone brand is taking a jab at the iPadOS later this year. One of these features includes Assistive Access,
premium segment with a foldable smart- which will offer a distinct interface with high contrast buttons and large
phone. Yet, it doesn’t want you to break text labels across the Camera, Photos, Music, Calls and Messages apps
the bank. The Tecno Phantom V Fold is a on the iPhone. With Live Speech—on the iPhone, iPad and Mac—users
capable foldable smartphone with a start- will be able to type what they want to say and have it spoken out loud
ing price of ₹88,888. It’s not perfect and during phone and FaceTime calls as well as in-person conversations, the
there are a few mishits here and there but tech company said in a news release. Another speech assistance feature
it offers a competent foldable experience is Personal Voice, which allows users at risk of losing their ability to
under a lakh. speak to create a voice that sounds like them. This voice integrates
In China, the competition is more seamlessly with Live Speech, Apple said, so users can speak using their
intense. And it is likely that a lot of it will Personal Voice when connecting with others.
trickle down to other markets sooner or
later, as Oppo’s recent launch indicates.
2
Chinese smartphone players like Xiaomi, WEBB SPOTS SIGNS OF UNI-
Huawei, Honor, vivo and Oppo have put VERSE’S BIGGEST STARS
out a slew of foldable smartphones in
China, pushing the envelope in innova- Astronomers said in a study on
tion and driving adoption. Globally, there 17 May that the James Webb Space
have been Motorola’s 2022 Razr, a Surface Telescope has helped them detect the
Duo by Microsoft, and now the Pixel Fold first “chemical signs” of supermassive
from Google. As adoption grows world- stars in the early universe. So far, the
wide, we will see more launches and largest stars observed anywhere have a
enhanced availability. mass of around 300 times that of the
sun. But the supermassive star
APPLE LAGS—FOR NOW described in this new study has an
The absence of Apple in the growing cate- estimated mass of 5,000-10,000 suns, an AFP report said. The research-
gory is now making iPhone fans and ana- ers used observations from the galaxy GN-z11—which is more than 13
lysts restless. In fact, Apple is the only billion light years away and was discovered by the Hubble Space Tele-
major global smartphone brand now scope in 2015. According to the AFP report, Webb offered two new clues:
without a foldable device in its portfolio. the incredible density of stars in globular clusters and—more crucially—
Apple may well take its time before the presence of lots of nitrogen. It takes truly extreme temperatures to
introducing a capability or jumping into a
new category, riding on its dominant posi-
make nitrogen, which the researchers believe could only be produced by
a supermassive star, the report added.
tion with the iPhone portfolio, but the
wait is now looking stretched. Anecdo-
tally, I have seen several iPhone loyalists
jump ship to Samsung only to experience
life with a foldable smartphone.
If Apple doesn’t have a foldable device
by the holiday season next year, the com-
pany’s shareholders and fans might have
reason to worry, considering the segment
will command tens of billions of dollars in
revenue by then. Some of it will come out
of Apple’s kitty, since many purchases
would be by existing iPhone owners, not
new customers.
According to IDC, Samsung enjoyed a
79% share of the global market for foldable
smartphones in 2022. While the first-
mover advantage has helped the brand
3
establish itself as a formidable player, oth- UN’S STARK WARNING ON GLOBAL WARMING
ers are now looking to grab some of that
share in regions outside China. For, folda- On 17 May, the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO)
ble smartphones offer an additional said there’s a two-thirds chance that one of the next five years
incentive to consumers to upgrade will see global temperatures exceeding the more ambitious target of 1.5
phones, and, since these are premium degrees Celsius set out in the Paris accords on limiting climate change. It
devices, the margins are higher. Foldable said “there is a 98-percent likelihood” that at least one of the next five
phones also happen to be some of the years (from 2023-27), and the five-year period as a whole, will be the
coolest mobile tech gadgets available right warmest on record as greenhouse gases and the El Niño phenomenon
now. Are you ready to try one? combine to send global temperatures soaring. The global mean temper-
ature in 2022 was 1.15 degrees Celsius above the 1850-1900 average.
Abhishek Baxi is a technology journalist
and digital consultant. —Compiled by Nitin Sreedhar.
correctly even if you are walking around degree panoramas far more easily via the
the room or are recording a video of your- app. The app, however, doesn’t support
self without a cameraperson. It works capturing high dynamic range footage.
even if the subject is hidden or moves out
of the frame briefly and supports gesture VERDICT
control to activate tracking and recording Battery life is solid, with the gimbal esti-
without having to go over to your phone. mated to last around 12 hours per charge
In doing so, I observed an issue that’s on the generous 2,900mAh battery. Even
inherent to the folding design in compact more impressively, you can use the Flow
gimbals—the Flow offers a limited amount as a power bank—a USB-C port on the
of tilt, which impacts how it can be used gimbal arm lets you charge your smart-
when held far above your head or phone from the Flow’s battery, whether
held down low, or in the Pan- you are using the gimbal to shoot video or
INSTA360
Follow mode. Whether it’s
a deal-breaker or not
depends on your
it’s packed away in your bag.
Considering this is the brand’s first
attempt at a smartphone gimbal, the pep-
FLOW shooting scenarios. pering of thoughtful features that would
Weight: Approx 369g From an image typically be incremental improvements in
Compatible phone weight, stabilisation per- second- or third-generation products is
spective, particu- super impressive. Equal parts feature
width, thickness: 130-300g; 64- larly outdoors, the packed, practical and downright ingen-
84mm; 6.9-10mm Flow does an excep- ious, the Flow is Batman’s utility belt for
Port: USB-C; Run time: 12 tional job of reducing mobile gimbals. Thanks to its portable
hours movement. You can form factor, solid feature set, Insta360’s
Battery: 2,900 mAh be running alongside fantastic software and AI tracking and
Price: ₹15,900 your child on a football quite literally a do-everything approach,
field and the stabilisation it pulls ahead of the competition.
will smoothen out even the kind If you are looking for a creative edge to
of footage you would expect from the videos, whether you are shooting reels on
vacations or are serious about video as a
When you are done, the app uses AI to hobby, throw away the basic selfie stick.
You can’t go wrong with the Flow.
While you would primarily use the Flow
Face recognition and tracking are for video, the selfie stick and the tripod Tushar Kanwar, a tech columnist and
commentator, tweets @2shar.
 08 Saturday, 20 May 2023
MuMbai
BETTING
ON SKILL
The cricket-focused
fantasy sports market
in India is booming.
Despite legal and
taxation challenges, the
future is wide open,
and everyone wants in
on the action
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COVER
Aditya Mani Jha
S
abse pehla sapna toh yeh hai ki ghar bane
apna khud ka (The first dream is to build
a house of my own),” said Shahabuddin as
the cameras clicked away in the back-
ground. Last month, the autorickshaw
driver from Sendhwa, Madhya Pradesh, found him-
self plucked from obscurity and thrust into the spot-
light, fielding questions from the biggest media out-
fits in the country.
For, on 1 April, Shahabuddin, who invested ₹49 in
a paid contest on the fantasy games app Dream11,
won ₹1.5 crore at the conclusion of the Kolkata
Knight Riders vs Sunrisers Hyderabad game in the
Indian Premier League (IPL). His story fit the rags-
to-riches template so perfectly that virtually every
news channel descended upon Sendhwa for a piece
of the action. The man himself could barely
believe his luck. He had started playing real-
money games on Dream11 in 2020 and three
years later, his day of glory was here.
In 2020, lockdowns forced a lot of us to
try things for the first time, mostly in a bid
to keep ennui and cabin fever at bay. For
me, one of these things was fantasy sports,
specifically the season-long game on the
IPL website (fantasy.iplt20.com) con-
structed by Dream11, India’s biggest fantasy
sports firm.
The concept was simple. Dream11’s
“daily challenge” (which had a lot of
money attached to it) involved select-
ing 11 players for every single IPL game,
trying to maximise your points. The
season-long game, however, wasn’t
played for money. Every run was a point,
every wicket was 25 points and there
were bonuses for all kinds of things, like
hitting the wickets outright (for bowlers)
or hitting at least 30 runs (for batters). Substi-
tutions would be locked in once the first ball of
the match was about to be bowled and a finite
number of substitutions were allowed Chennai Super Kings in action against Royal Challengers Bangalore during an IPLmatch in Bengaluru in April 2015. HINDUSTAN TIMES
throughout the tournament, which
made this a classic “resource alloca- too. These are places like Lucknow, Jaipur, Bhopal, But now there is an entire section of viewers who are crore for the deal). Its current series of advertise-
tion problem”, the maximising of a Kota and Dehradun. playing fantasy sports and who probably think ments sees actors Aamir Khan, R. Madhavan and
linear equation with a relatively Dream11 holds 90% of the market share, with its 30-40 minutes are not enough to get the informa- Sharman Joshi (stars of the 2009 superhit film 3 Idi-
large number of variables. As a life- competitors being firms like Fantasy Akhada, A23 tion they need. There are so many permutations and ots) alongside cricketers like current Team India
long math nerd, I was hooked. and Guru11. Clearly, fantasy sports firms have combinations of players that can work for every captain Rohit Sharma, Hardik Pandya and Bumrah.
Besides, in 2020 it was my elder unlocked a humongous market in India and set the game and you need every bit of information you can In the past, taking former players for fantasy
brother who had urged me to join the “league” he stage for aggressive expansion. get to make your choice.” Substitutions are allowed sports advertisements has led to concerns about
had formed with his old college friends. A welcome In India, real-money fantasy sports are legal in till the first ball; 3.30pm or 7.30pm, as the case may conflict of interest, both in India and elsewhere. In
distraction and a chance to rekindle (good-hu- most states and Union territories (like Delhi, Madhya be. In the case of delayed starts, the clock ticks till the 2020, Sourav Ganguly, then president of the Board
moured) sibling rivalry? Amen to that, I said, and Pradesh, Rajasthan). They were briefly outlawed but first ball. of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), endorsed
for 30-40 minutes every day, I would weigh the later allowed in some states (Karnataka and Tamil Chopra gives the example of the game between My11Circle, a rival of the IPL sponsors Dream11.
pros and cons of picking, say, Glenn Maxwell over Nadu). States like Sikkim and Nagaland, which have Mumbai Indians and Gujarat Titans at Mumbai’s Dream11 claimed it did not have a problem because
Virat Kohli, Kagiso Rabada over Jasprit Bumrah. I legalised casinos, sought to bring fantasy sports Wankhede stadium on 12 May, where the former it was a “personal endorsement”, not one as BCCI
went on to play the entire season-long game that under their own regulations but the companies beat the latter (a much higher-ranked team) com- president. Ultimately, the issue was dropped.
year and I have played every year since. declined and they currently do not offer real-money fortably. “Wankhede is one of the flattest grounds in Former sportspersons continue to appear in adver-
According to an April 2023 report from the Feder- fantasy games in these areas. the country, great for batters” Chopra says. “But for tisements. This is par for the course when it comes
ation of Indian Fantasy Sports (Fifs), the industry’s some reason—nobody knows what—Shubman Gill to fantasy sports globally too—ahead of the com-
self-regulatory body, and the audit and consultancy THE BUSINESS AND THE BROADCAST doesn’t have a good record at this ground, I think he pany’s mobile app release in Massachusetts, US,
firm Deloitte India, the fantasy sports market in Today, the influence of fantasy sports in the IPL averages about 8 there. So, if you were playing fan- DraftKings recently shot an ad with former Boston
India now has a current enterprise valuation broadcast itself is palpable. Before a game, there are tasy cricket, you would not want to risk making Gill Red Sox mainstay David Ortiz.
of ₹75,000 crore. There are over 300 plat- dedicated segments offering tips for fantasy sports your vice-captain or captain,” says Chopra (captain’s On the JioCinema app (the current streaming
forms for fantasy sports across the country (the players. Ex-cricketers offer advice about which play- points are automatically doubled, while the vice- partners of the IPL), you can play Jio Dhan Dhana
better-known ones include Dream11, Fantasy ers are in form, which venues work well for what captain’s points are multiplied by 1.5). As it turned Dhan—answering one question about the day’s
Akhada, A23 and Guru11) and an estimated 180 mil- style of play and so on. In vogue currently is the idea out, Gill was bowled for a paltry 6 off nine balls. game (for example, “Over No.15 will go for how many
lion users. Taxes worth ₹4,500 crore have been of “matchups”, i.e. which batters are vulnerable Fantasy players like myself, seduced by Gill’s sur- runs?”, followed by four options) to potentially win
generated by the industry between FY18 and against which bowlers, or what lengths are ideal for real run of form over the last six-eight months, suf- a car or other prizes. There are secondary services
FY22, a number expected to reach ₹26,000 crore bowling on different kinds of pitches. fered on 12 May. We ought to have listened to and products like the MPL (Mobile Premier League)
over the next five financial years, according to According to former Team India opener and Chopra and co. during the pre-match fantasy seg- Opinio, which uses a similar format, with yes-or-no
the report. broadcaster Aakash Chopra, whose Hindi commen- ment. questions about the match of the day, in exchange
A 2019 industry report from IFSG (the tary seems to be especially popular these days, fan- If you watch even 30 minutes of an IPL game for a shot at monetary prizes (Opinio, incidentally,
former avatar of Fifs) noted that while the tasy sports have made a significant difference to the today, you will see seven-eight different advertise- is endorsed by former cricketers-turned-commen-
gaming industry’s first 10 million users pre-match programming in particular. “Earlier, only ments that will drive home the significance of the tators like Chopra and Danny Morrison).
were from the metros, tier 2 city hard-core fans would tune in 30-40 minutes before fantasy sports industry. To begin with, Dream11 is These entities, and the IPL season-long fantasy
users formed over 50% of the cus- the game,” Chopra says. “They would faithfully one of the official partners of the IPL (in 2020, it was game that I and 2.5 million others play, can be con-
tomer base—this is the case today watch the toss, the pre-match interviews and so on. also the title sponsor, after paying upwards of ₹200 sidered “gateway drugs” for the real money-spin-
R STORY
ners, Dream11’s paid contests, which have an entry
fee for participation and offer a chance to win the
pool’s top prize.
The most popular contests are the ones with low
entry fees (anywhere from ₹5-100) and high prize
pool (prizes totalling ₹10-20 crore or more). Natu-
rally, these contests also typically have 20-30 mil-
lion players or more, according to data from the
Dream11 app. Apart from these low-entry-fee con-
tests, however, there are also smaller contests, often
private. Entry fees for these are typically five figures
or more, with a handful of players, and the prize
money, accordingly, runs into a few lakhs. Poten-
tially, if one keeps choosing high-entry-fee contests
and losing, one could end up losing a lot of money
across the 70-odd days of the IPL.
I mention the “gateway drug” bit for good rea-
son—one of the advertisements currently playing in
the IPL is for an app called Kissht (the Hindi word for
“instalment”), which offers quick, small-amount
lines of credit. Clearly, the ads are meant to push you
towards the paid contests.
DAILY REWARDS
Dream11’s business model is simple: It takes a com-
mission of about 15-20% of the total prize money for
every league or “contest”, as they call it. The fact that
the users put up the money themselves—the plat-
form only takes its cut from the prize money, not the
actual pool itself—is crucial.
Daily games means that there’s a daily reward
mechanism that keeps bringing users back for more.
Thejaswi Udupa, vice-president at Foundit.com
(formerly Monster), has over five years of experience
in sports product management and reckons that the
daily gratification factor is the game-changer for
firms like Dream11. “What has happened in India is
pretty much a reflection of what happened in Amer-
ica five-six years ago with firms like DraftKings,” he
says.
“See, the traditional fantasy sports have
been around for a long time, whether it’s
the ‘draft model’ or the ‘salary cap model’.
But it’s only the very invested players who
will spend half an hour or an hour every
day on their team. Even Dream11 started
off with the very traditional salary cap
model. But they realised that if they
wanted more and more people to use
their product, they have to provide a
game in which there’s some instant
gratification,” says Udupa.
Back in 2010-11, Udupa was the
product manager at Yahoo!
Cricket and one of the things
they tried to do was create a
fantasy sports product for
cricket. “We had tied up
with Dream11 and they
would white-label the
solution for us. We wanted
to develop a game that
would be far more
engaging than the
usual, you know, daily
team setting and changing
of players, which is what you
do in salary-cap-based fantasy sports,”
Udupa explains.
The game Udupa and Yahoo!
Cricket came up with was Predicto-
pus—the pun alluding to Paul the
Octopus predicting games in the
2010 football World Cup. The idea
was to offer odds throughout the
game on who would win. The
twist? You could trade on these
predictions, just like trading on the
stock market. The odds would
keep changing after every event (a
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A Delhi Capitals bus in Mumbai
on 24 March 2022.
The most popular contests are
the ones with low entry fees
(₹5-100) and high prize pool
(prizes totalling ₹10-20 crore or
more). These typically have
20-30 million players
AFP
six, a wicket) based on “market sentiments”. It was a
points-based system where at the end of the day the
leader board would be dictated by the trades you
would make “on these local points of maxima and
minima”, as Udupa puts it.
Yahoo! Cricket hit a snag because fantasy cricket
was a novel concept at the time and they had to sit
with lawyers and draft arguments that said this was
not a game of chance but a game of skill.
EARLY OPTIONS
The late 2000s was when the fantasy sports industry
took its first big steps in India (Dream11, for example,
was formed in 2008) but there was a very important
precursor.
When I was a teenage cricket fan watching every
ball Sachin Tendulkar and co. played, the high point
of the men’s cricket team was a 12-month phase in
2002-03 when they won the 2002 ICC Champions
Trophy in Sri Lanka and finished runners-up at the
2003 World Cup in South Africa. But these tourna-
ments weren’t the only thing cricket fans were keep-
ing an eye on. Super Selector, ESPN Star Sports’ fan-
tasy game, was all the rage at the time.
Sharmistha Gooptu, writing in the 2005 Rout-
ledge book Sport In South Asian Society: Past And
Present (edited by Boria Majumdar and J.A. Man-
gan), described the influence of Super Selector dur-
ing the 2002 Champions Trophy and the 2003
World Cup.
“During both tournaments, Super Selector, a fan-
tasy cricket game show was being shown on ESPN
and Star Sports channels in the prime-time slots of
7.30pm and 10pm. Super Selector became prominent
during 2001, and was played by some 500,000 peo-
ple during the 2003 Cricket World Cup in South
Africa. (…) The phenomenal popularity of Super
Selector in India saw the launching of clones on the
BBC and Sky Television in Britain, and
www.cricinfo.com, cricket’s leading
website. During the 2003 World Cup,
the Super Selector website remained
inaccessible for long periods because it
was overloaded, too many people hav-
ing entered at the same time,” Gooptu
writes.
In September 2002, an interactive
element was added to the show for the
Champions Trophy. Participants in
Super Selector would be con-
tacted (live and at ran-
dom) over the phone
and asked a
question on
cricket trivia.
The prizes on
offer included cars
and motorbikes. The
person getting the
maximum number of
Super Selector points
would be invited into the
ESPN Star Sports’ com-
mentary box.
If you follow Dream11
and what it’s doing right
now with the IPL broad-
cast and on its app, there
are clear parallels with
the Super Selector era.
Joy Bhattacharjya,
who produced Super
Selector for television,
has been the director
general of Fifs since
July 2022.
Although cricket
remains by far the
most popular sport in
India, gaming compa-
There are over 300 platforms for fantasy sports across the country.
nies are actively expanding in other markets as well.
For example, Dream11 has an official partnership
with the Pro Kabaddi League.
Recognising that this is a nascent market, Dream11
also offers free-of-cost “trial games” so that users can
get a hang of team-building in kabaddi. The platform
also offers users fantasy games pertaining to sports
like football, hockey and basketball. According to a
September 2020 report in Scroll.in, India had over
220,000 users of the Fantasy Premier League—
that’s the official fantasy game of the English Pre-
mier League.
LAWS OF THE GAME, GAMES OF THE LAW
The biggest challenges faced by the fantasy sports
industry have been legal. Over the last decade, states
like Karnataka and Tamil Nadu banned fantasy gam-
ing at various points, only to have those bans chal-
lenged and often overturned. The basic question
argued by courts, including the Supreme Court, per-
tains to whether online games are games of skill or
games of chance.
According to technology and gaming lawyer and
independent scholar Jay Sayta, this has historically
been the most important issue before the courts.
“Various states have, at various points of time,
argued over whether online games like fantasy
sports fall into the category of ‘games of mere skill’,”
says Sayta. “Which is a phrase derived from the 1867
Public Gambling Act. Since then, the Supreme Court
has ruled in the context of things like horse-racing,
rummy etc. that these games involve a clear domi-
nance of skill over chance and therefore they cannot
be treated at par with gambling, betting or the lot-
tery etc.”
To get the gaming companies’ perspective on
legal issues, I speak to lawyer Sahil Arora, partner at
Saraf and Partners, who has extensive experience in
fintech and regulatory issues.“Insofar as what would
amount to gambling, the jurisprudence has been
settled for decades now,” says Arora. “And to that
end, a distinction is made between a ‘game of skill’
and a ‘game of chance’. Right from the time of K.R.
Lakshmanan v. State of Tamil Nadu (1996), the
Hon’ble Supreme Court settled the issue that in
order to constitute gambling, three elements are
required. One, the user is putting in money to be able
to play the ‘game’ (that is to say, there is an element
of consideration); second, the user is getting a
reward at the end; and most importantly, No.3 is that
the ‘game’ in question is one of ‘chance’. Only once
all of these three elements are satisfied is a particular
activity considered ‘gambling’.” Basically, once a
game is regarded as a “game of skill”, it is considered
a legitimate business practice, not gambling.
Arora points out that in the 1967 case of State of
Andhra Pradesh v. K. Satyanarayana & others,
rummy was deemed to be a game of skill based on
these factors. He adds that in south Indian states,
revenue from games like rummy is immense
because of the cultural affinity to rummy there.
These issues tend to be extremely geo-specific.
For example, poker is socially accepted as a predom-
inantly skill-over-chance game in the US, so it’s
legally recognised that way. Today, lobbying efforts
are under way to get poker legally recognised as a
game of skill in India as well.
“The UK has a clear licensing policy when it comes
to gambling,” Arora says. “That’s their way of ensur-
ing that anything coming under the ambit of ‘gam-
bling’ is legitimised, it’s regulated, there are licens-
Saturday, 20 May 2023
MuMbai 09
ing frameworks, you can make sure there’s no addic-
tion, there are well-defined limits to the amount of
money you can invest within a time frame and so
on.”
Countries like Australia have both national- and
state-level laws on gambling. Things are so specific
that horse-racing has a law all to itself, as does bingo.
When it comes to something as new and as rapidly-
evolving as fantasy sports, perhaps it’s advisable to
have this level of granular detail in any legislative
framework that seeks to regulate this sector.
As Arora points out, certain states, like Andhra
Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Telangana, can
be termed “restricted”. Earlier, their laws prohibited
gambling, with an exception in place for games of
skill. But when news reports started pouring in
about vast sums of money lost, addiction and even
suicides due to huge losses, governments began to
explicitly outlaw online gaming. In 2020, the
Andhra Pradesh government banned Dream11 and
other fantasy gaming platforms. In 2021, Karnataka
and Tamil Nadu followed suit. At the same time,
these states were generating huge revenue from
online gaming, which meant that the stakes were
very high for the gaming companies as well.
The gaming companies challenged the govern-
ments of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu in the respec-
tive high courts and won, arguing that the state laws
were against Article 19 (1) (g) of the Constitution,
which pertains to the right to practise one’s trade or
commerce. In Article 19 (1) (g), the only exceptions
placed dealt with gambling and the companies
argued that their games had already been recog-
nised as games of skill, i.e. different from gambling.
Legal battles continue in Telangana and Andhra
Pradesh (online games are not offered in their mon-
ey-making versions in these states).
Some states, like Sikkim and Nagaland (both of
which have legalised casinos), sought to bring fan-
tasy sports within their own, relatively permissive
legal frameworks. Others, like Assam, Odisha and
Arunachal Pradesh, are in a legal grey area—fantasy
sports are neither explicitly permitted nor explicitly
outlawed (there is no “game of skill” exception in the
gambling law). Both these categories of states have
been given a pass by the gaming companies for now.
Perhaps the relatively low number of participants
from these low-population states does not justify the
operational costs of bringing the business under the
ambit of state-specific regulations.
There have been taxation issues as well, with the
GST (goods and services tax) council slapping eva-
sion notices on fantasy sports firms at the end of
2022. The bone of contention between the GST
council and the gaming companies is simple—
should the total entry money in online contests
(GGV, or gross gaming value) be taxed? Or just the
net revenue, the 15-20% commission charged on the
prize money alone (GGR, or gross gaming revenue)?
The gaming companies favour the latter, since the
money supplied by players for the pool is parked in
an escrow account and the companies do not touch
it. Once the contest is concluded, the prize money—
minus the commission—is credited to the winner
and it is this money alone that’s considered an
“actionable claim” in legalese. “Actionable claim”
refers to a debt that a company legally owes custom-
ers—a sum of money not yet transferred, services
promised but not rendered, etc.
TURN TO PAGE 10
 10 Saturday, 20 May 2023
MuMbai
The craze for pickleball
A hybrid of tennis,
badminton and table
tennis, pickleball is
picking up pace,
positioning itself as a
community sport
Deepti Patwardhan
he first thing that caught
T Shubhada Varadkar’s
trained ear was the sound
of the perforated polymer
ball striking against the
paddle. An Odissi dancer, Varadkar would
see a diverse group play pickleball on the
two courts in the front yard of the Prabod-
hankar Thackeray Krida Sankul (PTKS; a
sports complex in Mumbai), where she
conducted dance classes.
“Initially, I was hesitant about playing at
this age, a different genre altogether,” says
Varadkar, 60. “It took six months for me to
just take that paddle in my hand. But once
I started playing, in 2021, I decided I will
continue playing this game.”
Since she still performs Odissi, Varad-
kar already had base fitness and decent
hand-eye coordination. At the age of 58,
Varadkar, a cancer survivor, took on the
sport with new-found zeal. “It’s such a
beautiful thing that at any age one can play
this game. It’s almost injury-free,” she
says. “You feel like you are wanted in
sport, where usually once you are 35-40
you are out.”
The breaking down of age, gender and
fitness barriers is one of the reasons why
pickleball is surging in popularity all over
the world, including India. It has posi-
tioned itself as a community, recreational
sport that can be played by everyone in the
family, from the age of 8-80.
A hybrid of tennis, badminton and
table tennis, pickleball is mainly played
outdoor and looks a lot like tennis, but on
a court whose dimensions resemble that
of a doubles badminton court (20x44ft),
and with a paddle much like table tennis.
The paddle is much bigger, though—usu-
ally seven-eight inches wide and 15-16
inches long. The ball is a hollow sphere
and plastic crust with 26-40 round holes.
Table tennis paddles usually have tex-
tured rubber surfaces but this is prohib-
ited in pickleball. The paddles, now made
of graphite, carbon fibre or fibreglass, and
with a cardboard-like honeycomb core,
have to be absolutely flat. So, in pickleball,
when the paddle strikes the ball, it sounds
more like a crisp click than the thud off
tennis’ stringed rackets.
Everything about the sport, from the
name to the distinct noise the shot makes,
initially invited derision. But pickleball, a
non-contact, primarily outdoor sport,
picked up globally at the turn of the cen-
tury, and particularly since the pandemic.
In 2023, for the third year running, the
Sports and Fitness Industry Association
named it the fastest growing sport in the
US, with close to five million players. Last
month, it made a splash on TV with the
ESPN Pickleball Slam, which featured
tennis legends Andy Roddick, Andre
Agassi, John McEnroe and Michael
Chang. Roddick-Agassi won the doubles,
pocketing prize money of $1 million
(around ₹8 crore now).
Today the sport has a footprint in 80
countries. Though it was introduced only
FROM PAGE 8
9 a business model because ultimately taxa-
The companies argue that until the
game is over, there’s no actionable claim
in any case, so there should be no taxation
on the entry money.
If one were to tax the entire pool, the
taxation would obviously increase 5-10
times, perhaps more, since the revenue, or
GGR, is clearly orders of magnitude
smaller than the pool money (GGV). For
example, the most popular paid contests
on Dream11 see millions of users putting in
₹5 or ₹10 each, in exchange for the chance
to win ₹1-2 crore for themselves.
Earlier this month, the gaming industry
savoured a decisive victory in this context.
The Karnataka high court quashed a gov-
ernment notice sent to Gameskraft Tech-
nologies seeking ₹21,000 crore in unpaid
GST; the Bengaluru-based firm owns
online gaming brands like Gamezy and
RummyCulture.
The final decision on the GST policy
governing fantasy games is likely to be
taken in June, according to newspaper
reports, but the gaming companies are
confident that the currently prevalent 18%
tax on GGR will be codified in law—as
opposed to the 28% on GGV proposal
floated last year by the Union finance min-
istry. “It’s not just the fact of taxing the
gaming companies on the pool and not on
the revenue,” Arora says. “In America,
they do impose taxes on the entire pool
but there the GST amount is 0.25% or
0.5%, that’s a huge difference from the
28% being sought here. The latter is the
kind of taxation that could effectively kill
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in the late 2000s in India, it is played in 17
states and has more than 5,000 registered
players. Arvind Prabhoo, who is the head
of the All India Pickleball Association
(Aipa), also took over as the president of
the International Federation of Pickleball
(IFP) earlier this month.
ORIGIN STORY
Pickleball is said to have been invented on
Bainbridge Island, Washington, US, by
three friends: Joel Pritchard, Barney
McCallum and Bill Bell. On a lazy Sunday
afternoon in 1965, their children and they
decided to devise their own game when
they couldn’t find shuttles to play badmin-
ton in the backyard. They manufactured
the paddles from plywood in the shed and
are said to have used a whiffle ball in the
earliest version of the sport.
Legend has it that they named the game
after the Pritchards’ family dog, Pickles.
However, that theory has been refuted
by Pritchard’s wife, Joan. She said they
called it pickleball because the sport
reminded her of a pickle boat. In rowing,
the last boarded boat, where the leftover
crew members are put in together, is
called the pickle boat.
In India, the sport was introduced by
Sunil Valavalkar, who had his first brush
with pickleball in 1999 while on a business
trip to Hope in British Columbia, Canada.
Eight years later, he took a trip back to the
city, returning with pickleball paddles and
balls in the hope of teaching the sport to
his family and
friends.
“In the begin-
ning, the three
of us, me, my
daughter, who
was 10 at the
time, and niece,
who was eight,
would do demos
at schools and
clubs,” he says.
“First, people
thought we were
joking. A lot of
them would
agree to these
demos out of
courtesy. The
paddles we used
at the time were
wooden, quite
rudimentary. Peo-
ple would discour-
age me, ridicule
me, taunt me. I went through that entire
phase. But one of my friends, Anil Vyas,
who was a tennis player, gave the confi-
dence that this game would do well.”
Valavalkar went on to set up the All India
Pickleball Federation, which received the
government certificate of incorporation
in December 2008.
“I knew the game had a lot of potential,”
he says. “It is more than just a fitness sport.
It helps connect people. It won’t lead to
injuries. But at the same time, it is not a
sedentary sport. It helps with cardio,
hand-eye coordination, strategy and
motor skills.” Valavalkar hopes it will
become the prime vehicle to transport
India from a country that watches sport, to
one that plays sport.
“There are so many housewives, senior
citizens who have never played a sport
before, who are picking up pickleball,” he
says. “It is very adaptable. You can play it
on a terrace, in a corridor, parking space.”
With developments in technology,
companies are now making portable pic-
tion costs are passed on to the customer.
And once the consumer doesn’t find the
risk/reward equation favourable, they will
move on to unregulated, illegal games.”
NUMBERS VS EMOTIONS
The social aspect of fantasy sports—per-
sonal leagues, fan communities and so
on—is the next big thing companies are
looking to tap into.
Like a particular player? You get to craft
an entire contest centred around that
player’s performances. Want to create a
personal league with rules and points sys-
tems different from the default ones?
There are services (like Cricbattle) that
will let you do exactly that.
This is a new area of focus—leveraging
the personal connection fans have with
their favourite players and bringing more
current and former players to generate
exclusive, platform-only content for
users. A recent example is the Dream11-
backed Rario app, which offers officially
licensed “digital playing cards” for star
players. Rario, a cricket NFT (non-fungi-
ble tokens) marketplace, had signed NFT
and Web-3 related partnerships with cer-
tain players.
Last month, however, it ran into two
legal roadblocks. One, a rival company,
Striker, used public domain data on these
cricketers to make “digital playing cards”
of their own. Rario tried to shut them
down but the Delhi high court dismissed
Rario’s claim, saying no company has
exclusive rights to the identities and
achievements of a public personality.
VANTAGE
COURTESY ALL INDIA PICKLEBALL
(top) Andre Agassi and Andy
Roddick at the inaugural 2023
Pickleball Slam in Florida on 2
April; and a player at the Uttar
Pradesh Open Pickleball
Tournament held in Noida
from 21-23 April.
Today the sport has a
footprint in 80 countries.
In India, it is played
in 17 states and has
more than 5,000
registered players
Kabaddi is tipped.to take off as a fantasy sport
Two, a group of five players, including
Mohammed Shami and Harshal Patel,
have approached the Delhi high court to
stop what they claim is the unauthorised
use of their names and pictures on NFTs.
It was only during the pandemic that
the gaming companies witnessed a jump
in numbers and realised that the social
aspect could not be ignored any more.
When I speak to MK, a new convert to the
church of fantasy sports, he mentions that
the lockdown prompted his friends and
him to start playing Dream11.
ASSOCIATION
kleball courts and nets
that can be laid out any-
where, indoor or outdoor.
FINDING A HOME
Mumbai’s Vile Parle (East)
has been the hot spot for
Maharashtrian arts and
culture. Now Indian pic-
kleball has made a new
home in the heart of this
distinctive suburb. In
2017, when Valavalkar
was trying to establish a
base for the sport, he
arranged for a demo at
PTKS and found a kin-
dred soul in its owner,
Prabhoo.
“He (Valavalkar) came
and spoke to me about
pickleball,” says Prabhoo. “I immediately
understood that this game is going to be
the next big thing. Firstly, because it was
a combination of badminton, table tennis
and tennis. And everyone in India has
played either of these games.
“I also looked at it as an opportunity of
how I could contribute in making this
game big in India. All the other games, like
cricket, hockey, badminton, have a legacy
of 100 years in India. This is a new sport,
hardly 10-15 years old. That is what excited
me.”
The two worked together to take the
game to towns and regions around the
country, organising camps, clinics and
tournaments. PTKS, which offers a myr-
iad of activities, from shooting to yoga,
became the hub. Two dedicated courts
were laid out in the front yard and they
started offering coaching classes.
“After covid-19, I was too lazy to get
back into the gym,” says Pradnya Shenvi,
50. “My husband is a sports fanatic, he
kept telling me to take up some activity.
Finally, to get him off my back, I said I will
GETTY IMAGES
“It started as time-pass, obviously dur-
ing the (covid-induced) lockdown we all
had much more free time than before,”
MK says. “A bunch of us formed our own
league. Before you know it, these folks had
also invited their friends and it took on a
life of its own. I think the format (of fantasy
cricket) works because beyond a point,
IPL games start to resemble each other.
Competing with your friends and proving
your ‘cricket guru’ credentials is how you
keep things interesting.”
MK claims he has never gambled for
GETTY IMAGES
come and watch. And then I got totally
addicted to this game.”
The Shenvi clan—her husband and
daughter—now plays the game together.
Pradnya even won a 40-plus pickleball
national championship in Hyderabad in
2022 along with Sneha Barve, who once
represented Gujarat in kho-kho nationals.
“I wanted to take up some sport again,”
says Barve. “At 40, I didn’t want to play
against someone who is 19. I stumbled
upon this sport; I found good people. It’s
more of hand skills, unlike tennis, where
the court is bigger and you need to be
athletic.”
Pickleball coaching started at PTKS two
years ago with nine students; that number
is now over 100. The burgeoning number
has forced interaction between people of
different ages, different backgrounds, dif-
ferent reasons for playing the game. While
it is a stress-buster for people like Barve,
Varadkar believes it has helped her
become a better, fitter performer, work-
ing almost as cross-training for her dance.
It has given non-career athletes a sense of
belonging in a sport, and others an avenue
to channel their competitive spirit.
PICKLEBALL VS TENNIS
As has been the trend worldwide, tennis
players are now crossing over to pickleball
even in India. Isha Lakhani, who achieved
a career-high ranking of 291 in women’s
singles tennis, has taken to the sport.
“I quit tennis around 2011 because of
injuries,” says Lakhani, 38. “I wanted to
get back to sport. Being a racket sport, and
an outdoor sport, pickleball was the per-
fect fit. Initially, I struggled a little bit. A
tennis racket is way bigger. Plus, tennis
balls have more jump. In tennis, you can
hit a drop shot or finish the points much
sooner. You can hit very hard, very slow,
you can pass it well. Here the court is
smaller, the range of shots automatically
becomes smaller. You have to be more
money and doesn’t intend to. “Is it gam-
bling? If you are investing substantial
amounts, say more than a thousand
bucks in it, then yes, I would say it is simi-
lar to gambling,” MK says. “But it is
‘informed gambling’. There is a certain
minimum amount of knowledge you
need to have to even consider playing
these sports, right? There are so many
variables in cricket especially. Every
ground is different, the weather can
make a big difference to the game.”
It’s fair to say that the average cricket
fan in India is motivated more by emo-
tions and fandom than cold, hard statistics
and numbers. Will we see a cultural shift
with the growing prominence of fantasy
sports and all the secondary services asso-
ciated with them? According to cricket
analyst Alagappan Vijayakumar of Covers
Off (which offers daily tips via subscrip-
tion for fantasy sports players), this is a dis-
tinct possibility. “I think to an extent it’s
already taking place,” Vijayakumar says.
“When people see that analysts are using
data to achieve better results, they auto-
matically want more advice from that per-
son or that service. And they will start pay-
ing close attention to the numbers.”
But for that to happen , people must see
results and a process that can be repeated.
“It is only possible if fantasy cricket ana-
lysts use data correctly, which is currently
not the case in the mainstream,” Vijaya-
kumar says, “And it is something we are
attempting to improve. If an ordinary fan
attempts to use the data the same way as
most of these fantasy cricket analysts
show, they won’t get the results because
precise with your hitting.”
Tennis players also struggle to get their
heads around the fact that the sport has a
no-volley zone up to 7ft on either side of
the net. “It’s like tennis w (with) no learn-
ing curve, movement, spin or speed,”
former world No.1 Andy Roddick tweeted
about pickleball in September. But after
winning the ESPN Slam, in the company
of Agassi, he changed his take. “My official
amendment is that pickleball is like tennis
w not nearly as much learning curve,
movement, spin or speed. It’s a blast to
play though,” he wrote in April.
GOING PRO
The game is still relatively young in India
but Aipa is already funnelling talent from
the hinterland. The top-ranked men’s
player in the country, Tejas Mahajan, who
is also No.2 in Asia, comes from the small
town of Chopda in Jalgaon, Maharashtra.
“I stopped playing badminton once I
found pickleball,” says Mahajan. “I started
playing pickleball in 2016 on badminton
courts and with wooden paddles. Sunil sir
provided us with two wooden paddles. He
had got it made from a carpenter in a vil-
lage close by.”
Once he started winning state and
national championships, Mahajan, 25, was
invited by Prabhoo to train in Mumbai.
During the pandemic, he worked as a
blood collection worker but soon gave up
that job to focus on the sport.
Similarly, Sonu Kumar of Jharkhand,
who belongs to a family of blacksmiths, is
now training at PTKS. “I didn’t start it
thinking I was going to take it so seri-
ously,” says 21-year-old Kumar, who is a
cricket fan. “I kept playing, started doing
well, then realised I could even have a
future in this sport. Now there are 12-15 of
the best players training here. Everything
is taken care of, accommodation, diet. We
have a team, including a sports doctor and
psychologist, looking after us.”
Most of the funding for the players
comes from the long-term athlete devel-
opment programme of PTKS, which is
part of the charitable trust Chhatrapati
Shivaji Maharaj Smarak Samiti. Pickleball
players contribute too.
India, and Indians, are beginning to
make their mark. In November 2022,
India hosted the Bainbridge Cup, called
the World Cup of Pickleball, which
offered prize money of $50,000 and had
participants from 12 countries. Indian
players are also doing well at international
tournaments. At the 14-18 March Asia Pic-
kleball Open in Phuket, Thailand, in
which 19 countries participated, India
won 18 medals, the most by any country,
including a gold and a silver in men’s sin-
gles (Aditya Ruhela and Mahajan) and a
podium sweep in the men’s doubles. The
tournament attracted an audience across
age groups, so much so that Thailand’s
government wants to give it the tag of an
official sport.
“A lot of pickleball events are now crop-
ping up,” says Valavalkar. “There are pri-
vate tournaments offering up to ₹25 lakh
prize money.” Aipa is currently holding
the third national ranking tournament,
and the first in Goa, with over 250 players
participating in the 16 age categories. It
started on 19 May.
In the age of social media, everyone is
on the lookout for new trends. When it
comes to sport, pickleball may have just
hit the sweet spot.
Deepti Patwardhan is a Mumbai-based
sportswriter.
the fundamentals are off.”
With the growing popularity of
“matchups” (statistics depicting how a
batter fares against specific styles of bowl-
ing) et al, it’s not a stretch to see cricket
analysts receiving the “rock-star” treat-
ment typically reserved for stock market
experts.
Others are not so optimistic, however,
pointing out that such a cultural shift may
be the opposite of what the gaming com-
panies want.
Udupa says: “The people who bet
money on their favourite players, or
make other choices based on emotion,
they are the ones who are making the big
money for the gaming companies. If too
many people start approaching the
games with an analytical frame of mind,
the ‘house’ won’t win any more. It’s just
like a casino that way.”
Even as I write these words, I am keenly
aware that it’s about 40 minutes to toss
time at today’s IPL game; I have to change
my team. It’s Pavlovian, really, and I
understand the addictive pleasure of
online gaming much better now than I did
in my 20s. It combines the all-or-nothing
rush of a one-one-one sports contest with
the reward/punishment mechanisms
deeply ingrained within most of us.
This year has been my best-ever per-
formance, actually (currently ranked
3,500 out of 2.5 million teams, with about
80% of the tournament over), and I am a
little embarrassed at the inordinate, child-
like joy this “achievement” has given me.
Aditya Mani Jha is a Delhi-based writer.
 CULTURE Saturday, 20 May 2023
MuMbai 11

COURTESY KIRAN NADAR MUSEUM OF ART

A digital artist makes a

play in the gallery PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY METHOD KALA GHODA

Known for creating toy

faces of global cultural
icons, Amrit Pal Singh is
exploring a new space
to show his art
Gautami Reddy

A
mrit Pal Singh is not your typical
artist. Quiet, unassuming and all
of 34, he is India’s most important
name in the world of non-fungible
tokens (NFT), having earned a staggering
393 ETH (around ₹6.5 crore now) from
digital artworks online since he began in
2020. Now, he’s holding an offline exhi-
bition, The Toy Face Tour, of his iconic
The architectural model was showcased simultaneously at KNMA Saket and the 18th International Architecture Exhibition, Venice. digital toy faces—or toy-like renditions of
cultural figures and characters. Coincid-
ing with his 100th NFT drop, his first solo

The new KNMA as a

features prints on paper and canvas as
well as a constructed toy room, designed
entirely by the artist himself.
The objective is simple: to spread the
joy of creativity and art and build a com-
munity of individuals who can appreciate

cultural destination his work. In an interview with Lounge, he

talks about what creativity means to him
in today’s world. Edited excerpts:

As an NFT artist, how does it feel to

The museum and neglect of cultural legacy—in terms of
both visual and performing arts. “It is
cultural centre, set to such a struggle for an arts space to get
footfalls. Ours is a completely philan-
open in 2026, will thropic effort, aimed at educating people
in art and culture. We thought if we have
offer a confluence of a cultural centre alongside the museum,
diverse art forms people who visit the former will automat-
ically get exposed to art as well, and vice
versa. As a result, both the aspects will
evolve,” she says.
Avantika Bhuyan The new KNMA will house six galleries,
avantika.bhuyan@htlive.com including permanent ones to showcase
the in-house collection of over 10,000
his seems to be a good year modern and contemporary works. There
enjoy, spend time, feel a sense of commu-
nity, a coming together, a place that
invites multiple dialogues and conversa-
tions,” says Roobina Karode, director and
chief curator, KNMA.
She believes the new complex will take
forward Nadar’s vision—first outlined in
2010, when KNMA opened its doors—as
being a place of confluence and conver-
sations. “...a museum for the people and
a place that would embrace all art forms.
KNMA has been doing this on a modest
scale in the existing premises. However,
a distinctive feature in the new space is
that we will have special galleries dedi-
showcase your artwork offline?
I feel that to showcase something in a For toy faces, Amrit Pal Singh picks artists like Yayoi Kusama (below) he looks up to.
tangible form is a great experience and I
am so glad that with my solo show, I was
able to achieve that. That being said, I
love showcasing my work digitally. It is
way more accessible and I absolutely love
using the web and social media to get
more eyes on my art. I don’t want to pick
one over another. I want to explore them
both and push both of them to make my
online experiences more immersive and
offline ones more grand.
How has the NFT space impacted
your career trajectory?
I started making toy faces back in

T for the art and culture

space. If March saw the
launch of the Nita Mukesh
Ambani Cultural Centre in
Mumbai, this month saw plans unveiled
for the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art’s
(KNMA’s) new space in Delhi. On 18 May,
the architectural model was showcased
simultaneously at KNMA Saket in Delhi
and the 18th International Architecture
Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.
Envisaged as a museum and cultural
centre, to be opened by 2026, this arts
space will be spread across a massive
100,000 sq. m off the national highway
near the Indira Gandhi International Air-
port. It is being designed by the Ghana-
ian-British architect Sir David Adjaye—
known for projects such as the Smithso-
nian National Museum of African
American History and Culture and the
Princeton University Art Museum in the
US—in collaboration with S Ghosh &
Associates as the local architects of
record. This space will be in addition to
the KNMA’s galleries in Saket and Noida,
Uttar Pradesh.
For Kiran Nadar, founder-chairper-
son, KNMA, the aim is to address the
will be temporary shows too, either from
the collection or borrowed from other
museums. “The cultural centre will have
studios and two auditoriums to seat 700
and 200 people, respectively. These will
host music, dance and theatre perform-
ances,” adds Nadar. “The construction
work has just started and the thought on
the curation is going on.”
The plan is to host seminars, talks, art
courses, workshops, opera, craft shows,
and more, making the different aspects of
art and culture accessible. “More impor-
tantly, the museum is designed for move-
ment and repose, to slow down and
The new arts space,
spread across a massive
100,000 sq. m in Delhi, is
being designed by the
Ghanaian-British architect
Sir David Adjaye
cated to KNMA’s permanent collection.
It will allow us to curate it and present it
in unique ways and rotate the viewing of
the collection every year,” she adds.
It has taken nearly two years to select
the architectural team, through a compe-
tition that saw entries from around 70
architects across the world. Five of these,
shortlisted, went on to present themes
and models. Initially, the plan was to
open the museum in Noida.
“We had selected the space, which was
going to come through a government
auction, but that plan didn’t materialise.
We ended up finding this space opposite
Aerocity. But the building had to be
reconceptualised,” explains Nadar. “Ini-
tially, Sir David Adjaye had designed the
building as a vertical one. However, near
the airport, you can’t build anything
beyond 23m in height. So, the entire
scope of work changed.”
Now that the construction has started,
she plans to get an exhibition designer on
board to work closely with Karode on the
curation.
The model is on view at KNMA Saket till
28 May.
2020, which became quite popular with
tech and design communities. But once
I stepped into the NFT world, my prac-
tice took a new direction and got exposed
to a lot of new communities. Not just me,
I feel NFTs really helped digital art and
artists to be seen in a different light and
be taken more seriously.
The lines that separate collectors, art-
ists and curators have gotten blurred and
I have embraced all three roles, and so
did a lot of artists who got into NFTs. The
collaborative spirit is really high due to
the global nature of NFTs. I was able to
collaborate with artists worldwide, from
Pablo Stanley, LIŔONA to Mark Watts,
an artist who did the original Transform-
ers G1 illustration back in the 1980s.
Before that, I was doing a lot of com-
missioned work and exploring passions
like literature, art, cinema, product
design, interiors, history and architec-
ture. All of these have come together
beautifully in the physical toy room that
I have created in the exhibition for audi-
ences to immerse themselves in.
Your love for toys is evident in your
work. How did that come about?
I was one of those kids who loved play-
A gramophone from ‘The Toy Face Tour’.
ing with toys. From LEGO sets, Hot
Wheels cars to G.I. Joe figurines, I col-
lected everything. The colours, textures
and nostalgia have remained and found
their way into my art. When I was making
toy faces, I picked artists whom I looked
up to when I first started making art. I
remember my first trip to the National
Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi while I
was in school and discovering Amrita
Sher-Gil. I loved how charismatic she was
and, apart from being a talented artist,
she was such a style icon. I just had to
dedicate a work to her.
Similarly, I made a toy face of M.F.
Husain, who had visited my school back
in 2002 and painted his iconic horses on
the wall of the room where we used to
have our art classes. Another personal
favourite is Yayoi Kusama. I love her ear-
lier works and how bold and playful she
is as an artist. Other toy faces include per-
sonalities like Andy Warhol, Salvador
Dali, Piet Mondrian and Frida Kahlo. To
me, toy faces are a great medium for nos-
talgia. They almost act like portals to a
simpler time.
Gautami Reddy is a Delhi-based culture
writer, who explores the realms of art,
design, architecture, and technology.
Presented by Method and HEFTY.art,
The Toy Face Tour will be at the Interna-
tional Museum Expo, Pragati Maidan,
Delhi, till 20 May, at Method Kala Ghoda,
Mumbai, from 8-25 June, and Church
Street Social, Bengaluru, from 7-23 July.

Why The Flaming Lips’ ‘Yoshimi’ is still relevant

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Do You Realize?? has more than 75 mil- songs are exquisite melodies with intri-
THE LOUNGE lion hits on Spotify. For a band that is cate, almost delicate arrangements that
FIRST LIST
hardly mainstream, that is not bad at all.
For a song whose recurring line distur-
have become their trademark but the
mood and theme are about the loss of
B E AT bingly says, “Do you realise that everyone innocence. There are autobiographical
Five tracks from The you know will someday die?”, it could references and introspections about
SANJOY even seem surprising. Coyne’s early years growing up with
N A R AYA N Flaming Lips’ ‘Yoshimi Although The Flaming Lips came siblings who led carefree and some-
Battles The Pink Robots’ together in the early 1980s, it took them times wild lives. The album also has
to bookend this week time to break into the mainstream: In songs with direct references to psyche-

T
ime certainly flies. Late last year,
The Flaming Lips released a
deluxe edition of Yoshimi Battles
The Pink Robots to mark the 20th anni-
versary of that landmark album. When it
first came out in 2002, it gained the
Oklahoma, US-based band, which had
been around for nearly 20 years by then,
widespread popularity, proving to be a
breakthrough moment for the outfit led
by the talented, charismatic and ever-
energetic frontman Wayne Coyne.
Coyne, now 62, and his band are cur-
rently on tour, playing Yoshimi in its
entirety at some of the gigs. It remains
their most popular album and they have
been revisiting it regularly at their gigs
over the years.
For many rock lovers, The Flaming
Lips have stood out as one of the post-
punk era’s most adventurous, delight-
fully bizarre bands. In part, their weird-
ness comes from their spectacular live
shows: Many of these have storms of
light and massive amounts of confetti
shooting out of cannons, as well as the
spectacle of Coyne surfing over audien-
ces in a huge, transparent hamster ball.
That’s not all, however. The Flaming
This PDF was uploade To Telegram channel_ LBS Newspaper platform (https://t.me/LBSNEWSPAPER) @LBSNEWSPAPER
The Flaming Lips experiment constantly with electronics, orchestras, live performances.
Lips, who have 16 studio albums to their
credit, stand out. On Yoshimi, the band
embraced a more electronics-charged
sound, with the trio—Coyne (who,
besides writing and singing the songs,
also frequently paints the album covers
and produces the band’s records and
gigs), Steven Drozd (a multi-instrumen-
talist and composer) and Michael Ivins
(a bassist and keyboardist who is no
longer with the band)—melding a com-
puter-generated, generally upbeat
atmosphere with darker, inner-mean-
ing lyrics that portray humans pitted
against machines.
Against the backdrop of the current
discourse about the risks of Artificial
Intelligence (AI) and its import for
humanity, Yoshimi Battles The Pink
Robots may take on a different, more
relatable relevance. When it came out
in 2002 though, not long after the 9/11
attacks had changed the world, it was
widely considered a concept album.
The Flaming Lips may have had no
issue if their fans (and many critics)
received Yoshimi as a concept album
but they never intended it to be one. In
1. ‘Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots
Part I’
2. ‘Do You Realize??’
3. ‘Ego Tripping At The Gates Of
Hell’
4. ‘One More Robot/Sympathy
3000-21’
5. ‘It’s Summertime’
various interviews, Coyne himself has
demurred about the “concept album”
theory. In fact, Yoshimi’s battles against
the pink robots in Part I and Part II, two
songs with the album title, are believed
to be about a young woman bravely bat-
tling cancer. The band has never
directly alluded to this but has not dis-
puted the interpretation either, leaving
it to critics and listeners.
Nevertheless, it became their most
popular album, with one song on it, Do
You Realize??, instantly becoming an
earworm. In the era of music streaming,
the early 1990s, the heydays of alterna-
tive rock, they got a major record label
contract and their first commercially
successful album, Transmissions From
The Satellite Heart, was released in 1993.
The most popular song on that album,
She Don’t Use Jelly, is an odd little song
with nonsense lyrics about the eccen-
tric habits of people.
What sets apart The Flaming Lips is
Coyne’s and Drozd’s unending desire to
experiment—with electronics, orches-
tras and live performances. In 1999, the
Lips released a multilayered and intri-
cately composed album, The Soft Bulle-
tin, which was aurally luxuriant. The
experiments have continued. In 2009,
they released a collaborative album, The
Flaming Lips And Stardeath And White
Dwarfs With Henry Rollins And Peaches
Doing The Dark Side Of The Moon, a
re-imagining of the legendary Pink
Floyd album. More recently, Coyne
sang with pop star Miley Cyrus on one
of her albums as well as on one of the
Lips’ albums.
Although the band tours extensively,
its latest studio full-length, American
Head, is nearly three years old. The
delics (Mother I’ve Taken LSD). Psyche-
delia has always been associated with
The Flaming Lips and their hypnotic
shows but this was probably the first
time the band alluded to it in a song.
Yoshimi, however, remains the band’s
most compelling album, owing particu-
larly to its theme and lyrics. Recently, in
an interview with The Guardian, Coyne
was quoted as saying: “From the begin-
ning, we would meet people who told us
about playing Do You Realize?? when
their mother was dying in the hospital
or their brother had been in a car acci-
dent. We didn’t know what to say. In
time, we were able to have some dis-
tance and let down our guard. We wrote
the song, but what we made is not what
it’s become. We’re so grateful, lucky,
and blown away to have one of those
songs that people play at heavy, heavy
times, the heaviest you can endure.” It’s
true. I have played it at heavy, heavy
times, and it helps.
First Beat is a column on what’s new
and groovy in the world of music.
@sanjoynarayan
 12 Saturday, 20 May 2023
MuMbai BUSINESS LOUNGE

Rohit Zantye
THE LOCAL STORYTELLER The partner at Narayan Ganesh Prabhu Zantye and Co. on staying true to their Goan roots,
trying to establish a distinct identity for the state’s cashew, and why they will not go public
Illustration by Priya Kuriyan
Arun Janardhan

R
ohit Zantye makes for an
unusual next-gen of a
long-standing family
business. The fourth gen-
eration of the eponymous
cashew brand Zantye’s, visible at almost
every street corner in Goa, does not talk
about expanding his business, meeting
A lot of our
specific targets or conquering the world.
Instead, the partner at Narayan Ganesh
Prabhu Zantye and Co. talks about their
Goan roots and their keenness to stay true
customers
to these—“this is what we can do at the
maximum,” he says. “What I can do is go
ahead with various products made from
demand quality...
Goa cashews, give greater experiences to
consumers about various Goan specs,
which still people are not even aware of,”
says Rohit. For cashew, like feni, is almost
they also want it
synonymous with the state, distinct in
taste owing to the soil, its high iron con-
tent and harvesting process.
cheaper. They
The company, a major player nationally
and the biggest in the state, buys 90% of its
raw cashew locally, processing it at its
units and selling it in the local market,
are not worried
besides exporting to countries like the UK,
US, Germany, France and Japan. Some of
their cashew is sold under their brand,
about origin.
sought after by Goa’s tourists; the rest is
sold in the business-to-business (B2B)
market, to retailers and supermarket
chains, which sell under their own brands.
The company buys 25-40% of all the
cashew grown in Goa, from over 10,000
farmers—the state produces
20,000-24,000 tonnes of raw cashew;
just about 5,000 tonnes is sold as pro-
cessed cashew, for Goa has only about a
dozen processing units. The company has
four factories in Goa and one in Malvan in
southern Maharashtra, processing
approximately 30 tonnes of raw cashew a
day, or 6,000-7,000kg of kernels a day,
with an annual revenue of over ₹100
crore.

The company, which has

an annual revenue of
over ₹100 crore,
processes around
30 tonnes of raw cashew
a day

Forty-year-old Rohit, who has been

part of the family business for 18 years,
says the company will not go public. “It
should stay in the family because we
believe in something local. We don’t have
the inherent stand of expanding. I am not
the most efficient processor—there are
factories in Maharashtra and Karnataka
that are more efficient. They have huge
factories, huge production lines…. They
will be able to match the expectation from
investors.”
Born into a joint family that included
two uncles, Rohit grew up with a lot of
cousins for company in Bicholim. The
ground floor of the family mansion was
used to stock raw cashew, while the family
lived on the upper level.
One of his uncles, Harish, pivoted into
the cinema business, starting movie halls
across Goa, besides serving as a member of
the legislative assembly (MLA) and a
member of Parliament. Rohit’s father
Umesh, the youngest, and uncle Suresh and exporting to the US. options after graduating from St. Xav- works and I will not have the patience to either. “A lot of our customers demand
managed the cashew business. “You The company buys cashew from farm- ier’s, Mapusa, before eventually jumping Last book read teach, my father said.” quality but they also want it cheaper,” says
would not believe it but within our com- ers and sun-dries it so that it lasts for a into the family business. He initially ‘The Joys Of Compounding’ by “He was strict, you know,” Rohit pauses, Rohit. “They are not worried about origin.
pound wall, there was a cinema theatre,” year. Since the seasonal cashew is availa- wanted to become an electrical engi- Gautam Baid. adding, “I could never say no to him.” If you supply to a Reliance or Haldiram,
says Rohit, smiling. ble only from March-May, the company neer—probably because he was good at Today, Rohit handles Zantye’s sales they are not worried about origin. It’s all
The mix of eight cousins, some staying buys a year’s supply to store and process to math—but his father suggested doing an Passion besides nationally and manages three factories, about the price.”
in Panaji but together every holiday, made capacity. When the buying season ends, it MBA. He did do one from the Symbiosis cashew while Siddharth looks after export and He feels there is a huge disruption,
the household a riot. “Our house was like usually has enough supplies to continue Centre for Management and Human Finance. B2B sales—Zantye’s has two units exclu- challenges that will require them to dig in
a fish market,” says Rohit, who runs the processing till February. “So while my Resource Development in Nashik, Maha- sively for retail under its brand. “There is their heels and stay in the game. “Right
half-marathon frequently and cycles processing requirement is 30 tonnes, we rashtra, hoping to work in the food indus- Favourite off-work an eight-year gap between us. Somehow now, the margins have eroded in the B2B
occasionally. “We had social workers can purchase up to 5,000 tonnes of raw try. “But my father said nothing doing, ‘I activity we have been best friends besides being segment. In the B2C (business-to-con-
coming into this 150 sq. m hall area. My cashew,” explains Rohit. am getting old.’ That was almost 18 years Watching videos of an investor, cousins. So that has helped a lot. We have sumer) sector, we are doing pretty well.
uncle’s staff, Bicholim residents would These processed cashews are then sold back and he was 60-plus. ‘It’s high time the late Parag Parikh. been able to work because we are open, My problem is what I can differentiate as
walk in and out, some roaming in our din- in retail in varieties like salted, roasted, you learn.’” share everything. Goan.”
ing area at any point from morning to with skin, etc. “We went for all the certifi- His father reckoned it would take five- “It was good sailing for us from 1997- For, since Goa also makes feni from
evening. We would not lock our doors— cations—certified organic, fair trade, seven years for Rohit to learn the busi- 2015. Then competition came.... Your cashew, the fruit is not plucked from the
we didn’t know the concept of locking.” kosher,” says Rohit. Since last year, the ness because the purchase brings its own advantage will not remain with you for tree. Farmers wait for the fruit to ripen
company has begun offering ready-made challenges each year, depending on the long.” They now compete with brands fully and fall to the ground. “Feni needs
LEGACY BUSINESS sweets such as laddoos, kaju katli, cashew quantity and quality of local, national and such as Desai Cashew, Arya Cashew Prod- perfectly ripe apple,” says Rohit. This
Today, Harish’s son Pravin, also a former butter and chocolate-coated cashews. international produce and the market sit- ucts Pvt. Ltd, Sunrise Cashew Industries traditional process makes it labour
MLA, Suresh and his son Siddharth, “You have to come up with a portfolio uation. “You get the purchase cycle only and Ajanta Industries. intensive too—farmers will not pluck
Umesh and Rohit are partners in the busi- ahead of the competition,” he adds. once a year for you to understand. It’s from the tree even if the fruit looks
ness. emotional in how you react to it. So a lot ENTRY OF LARGE FIRMS mature. “It’s mostly to do with heritage
The Zantye family has a storied connec- THE BACKSTORY of emotional attachment goes into this Over the years, mechanisation and auto- and making feni,” he adds.
tion with cashew. When the Portuguese The lanky, bespectacled Rohit, who mod- and a lot of decision making is required,” mation have removed entry barriers, like “If you put soda or Coke in it, whether
brought the versatile plant from Brazil— erated a session on reviving the cashew says Rohit. labour-sourcing, to the industry. Across it’s Jack Daniel’s or Teacher’s or single
some believe it was to prevent soil ero- processing industry in Goa at April’s When he first joined the company, the country, cashew has become a capital- malt, you will not taste it. How does one
sion—four centuries ago, it became Cashew Festival in Panaji, speaks with everything revolved around purchase, intensive industry, opening the doors to make a difference from cashew to cashew
endemic to India’s western coast. Rohit’s schoolboyish enthusiasm. He barely noti- since the business was labour-intensive. large companies, says Rohit. in a hotel? So that’s where we are chal-
great-grandfather, Ganesh, started a ces the clamour that’s typical of a Star- The sanctioned load for one of their facto- Contrary to popular perception, then, lenged.”
household business of roasting cashew in bucks outlet, with a grinder in motion, the ries at the time, for instance, was just 10 all the cashew available in Goa is not
the early 1900s. His sons, Narayan and Sri- clatter of cutlery and people trying to kilowatts, with three motors. Today, it’s locally sourced. About half of it comes Arun Janardhan is a Mumbai-based
ram, expanded it, setting up processing speak over each other. 200kW. “You have to go through this six- from countries like the Ivory Coast and journalist who covers sports, business lead-
plants in Bicholim, among other places, He admits to flirting with other career to seven-year cycle to understand how it Indonesia. Not all of it is processed in Goa ers and lifestyle. He tweets @iArunJ.
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 LIVEMINT.COM
Saturday, 20 May 2023
MuMbai 13

BHOPAL CITY LINK LIMITED

2nd Floor, B Wing, ISBT Campus, Dr. Ambedkar Marg,
Bhopal (MP) 462023
Ph.: 0755 2062070, email : bcll_bpl@rediffmail.com
No: BCLL/EOI/ Bhopal, Date :
Expression of Interest
BCLL invites online EOI for submissions on website www.mptenders.gov.in
under organization name “Bhopal City Link Limited” for the following work.
Detailed EOI other information can be seen on the website www.mptenders.
gov.in of Government of M.P.
Name of Work Cost of Document
Expression of Interest for Implementation of Rs 1000/-
National Common Mobility Card (NCMC) for (Rs. One Thousand Only)
BCLL, Bhopal Non-Refundable
Corrigendum and Amendments to EOI, if any, would be published on e-procurement
website only, and not in newspapers. CEO, BCLL reserves all the rights to accept or
reject any or all tenders without assigning any reasons. -Sd-
Chief Executive Officer
BCLL, Bhopal

GUJARAT URJA VIKAS NIGAM LIMITED

CIN U40109GJ2004SGC045195
ISO 9001 -2015 Certified Company
Sardar Patel Vidyut Bhavan, Racecourse,
Vadodara 390007
PBX: (0265) 2310582-86, www.guvnl.com
Notice Inviting Tender
GUVNL invites tenders for procurement of power from 800

M.P. TEXTBOOK CORPORATION MW solar PV projects to be set up in Solar Park of GSECL at

Khavda (GSECL Stage 2) along with additional capacity of 800
“Pustak Bhawan” Arera Hills, Bhopal-462011 (M.P.) MW under Greenshoe option (GUVNL Phase-XX) through RfS
Tel. 0755-2551565, 2551294
No.GUVNL/800 MW/Khavda/Solar (Phase-XX) dated
E-mail ID : info.mptbc@mp.gov.in
20.05.2023.For tender documents, please visit the website
support-eproc@nic.in (for- E-tendering assistance)
www.bharat-electronictender.com and www.guvnl.com. The
No. 16532 Dated :19.05.2023
last date of bid submission is 15.06.2023.
NOTICE INVITING E-TENDER Date: 20/05/2023 General Manager (RE)
(P-6/2023-2024)
Online tenders are invited for the supply of
Online tenders are invited for the supply of 105 GSM
Parchment Paper (Aprox 80 M.T.), 250 GSM Art Card
(Aprox 100 M.T.) & 140 GSM Art Paper (Aprox. 220 M.T.)
The tender has been processed on the e-Procurement System
Portal https://mptenders.gov.in. Detailed NIT, Tender
Document and other details will be available on the portal
from 04.00 P.M. on 23.05.2023. The Bid documents can be
downloaded upto 11.00 AM on 07.06.2023 and online bids can
be submitted upto 11.30 AM on 07.06.2023. For any technical
related queries please call at 24x7 Help Desk Number 0120-
4001 002/0120-4001 005/0120-6277 787.
All Corrigendum/Amendments/Changes, if any, will only be
issued and made available on website https://mptenders.
gov.in
M.P. Madhyam/109965/2023 MANAGING DIRECTOR

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 14 Saturday, 20 May 2023
MuMbai NEWS LIVEMINT.COM

₹2,000
m MINT SHORTS
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is
notes pulled ‘Not proven’ at this stage: SC
set to meet Zelensky in Japan
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to meet Ukrainian president
Volodymyr Zelensky in Japan, according to Indian officials. It would
be the first meeting between the leaders since Russia’s invasion of
ahead of
elections
panel on Adani-Hindenburg
Ukraine. India been one of the prime buyers of Russian oil and weap-
ons, providing hard currency to Vladimir Putin’s government at a FROM PAGE 18
time when the G-7 is seeking to starve it of funds. BLOOMBERG
ination notes were issued prior The panel said its conclusions are based on the “prima facie position” of Sebi
to March 2017 and are at the
DGCA de-registers three aircraft end of their estimated life-span
of 4-5 years. It has also been Utkarsh Anand assist in further deliberation” on 11 July,
of SpiceJet, no impact on ops observed that this denomina- utkarsh.anand@hindustantimes.com when the matter is heard next. The
tion is not commonly used for New DelHI panel submitted its conclusions
transactions. Further, the stock regarding the Adani-Hindenburg row

of banknotes in other denomi-
nations continues to be ade-
quate to meet the currency
requirement of the public,” said
RBI in its press release.
The ₹2,000 notes were
introduced in November 2016
to urgently meet the currency
requirement after the with-
drawal of the legal tender status
of all ₹500 and ₹1,000 bank-
New Delhi: The civil aviation regulator Directorate General notes in circulation at that time.
of Civil Aviation has de-registered three aircraft of budget RBI printed nearly 3.7 billion
carrier SpiceJet. “Out of the five planes listed for deregistra- ₹2,000 notes amounting to
tion, one lessor has already requested DGCA to suspend the ₹7.4 trillion so far.
deregistration of two aircraft. Out of the remaining three, two Mint reported on 25 July
were grounded for a long period and not operational. Hence, 2017 that RBI had stopped
there is no impact on our operations. We remain focussed on printing these notes and
bringing on our grounded fleet back into operations,” a Spi- stepped-up printing of the new
ceJet spokesperson said. ANU SHARMA ₹200 notes. The printing of
these ₹2,000 notes was
stopped after the notes in other
IIFL, Anand Rathi Commodities denominations were available
face heat in NSEL scam case in adequate quantities.
However, it was also seen
Mumbai: A special court hearing a case in the 2013 spot that the circulation of ₹2,000
exchange NSEL scam has issued process for offences under the notes had drastically come
IPC, MPID and FCRA, 1952 against Nirmal Jain, director of IIFL down over the years, with even
Commodities, India Infoline Finance, promoter of IIFL Com- bank ATMs rarely disbursing
modities, Preeti Gupta and Rupkishore Bhutada, directors of these notes. According to RBI,
Anand Rathi Commodities, Anand Rathi Commodities, and the ₹2,000 notes currently
Shiney George and Manish Gupta, directors of Geofin Comtrade constitute only 10.8% of the
for their alleged role in the fiasco. RAM SAHGAL notes in circulation, amount-
ing to Rs 3.62 trillion as against
37.3%, amounting to ₹6.73
OpenAI brings ChatGPT app lakh as on 31 March 2018.
to smartphones for first time
A
llegations of stock price under three major heads – alleged vio-
manipulation or violation lation of MPS norms, disclosure of
of minimum public share- transactions with related parties in
holding (MPS) norms by accordance with law and alleged stock
Adani group companies price manipulation.
remain unproven “at this stage”, While the Sebi initiated an investiga-
according to the expert committee tion in October 2020 to look into possi-
appointed by the Supreme Court to ble violation of MPS norms by Adani
look into alleged regulatory failure by companies using 13 overseas entities
the Securities and Exchange Board of that the regulator suspected “could be
India (Sebi) and breach of laws in the fronts for the promoters” of some
wake of the Adain-Hindenburg epi- Adani companies, the panel noted, it
sode. has “drawn a blank so far” and has not
Indian stock market laws require a reported any offence under the Sebi
listed company to have a minimum The market regulator has “drawn a blank so far” while probing possible violations Act or for alleged violation of the For-
public shareholding of 25% to keep a of MPS norms but the Adani group, the panel noted REUTERS eign Exchange Management Act
free float available for the price discov- (FEMA). Sebi’s attempts to seek infor-
ery of stocks. “Even the fundamental violation of MPS norms of some Adani Though the conglomerate rejected the mation from some foreign regulators
rules of evidence would require a con- companies following the US short- report as “unresearched” and “mali- about suspicious FPIs have also been
clusion of whether an allegation is seller Hindenburg Research report ciously mischievous”, it triggered a unfavourably treated since they sought
‘proved’, ‘disproved’ or ‘not proved’. At released on 24 January. rout of Adani Group stocks, which lost adequate justification for entertaining
this stage, the factual matrix appears to On 17 May, the apex court gave Sebi over $140 billion in days and forced the such a request, which the panel called
place the matter in the cancellation of a ₹20,000 a “chicken and egg” situation.
realm of ‘not proved’ - the MORE PROBES ON THE WAY crore share sale in the “In the instant case, it appears that
regulator has not been group’s flagship. Sebi is not able to make out a case, and
able to prove that its sus- SEBI has decided to SC gave Sebi time till THE allegations The six-member panel, such a position of the case not being
picion can be translated conduct further
investigations into
14 Aug to complete
its probe into the
triggered a rout of
Adani Group stocks,
led by retired Supreme made out is presented as a prima facie
into a firm case of prose- the alleged violation allegations by which lost over $140 Court judge A.M. Sapre, position, which cannot be confirmed
cuting an allegation of of MPS norms Hindenburg billion in days was set up by the court on unless more investigation is done. In
violation,” the report 2 March. The panel sub- any prosecution of proceedings,
reviewed by HT said. mitted its report to the whether civil or criminal, the presenta-
To be sure, the 173-page report care- time till 14 August to complete its probe CJI-led bench last week. While grant- tion of a prima facie case is the respon-
fully added a caveat that its conclusions into the allegations thrown up by the ing more time to Sebi for the probe, the sibility of the plaintiff or the prosecu-
are based on the “prima facie position” Hindenburg report, alleging “brazen court on Wednesday directed the shar- tor. Once a prima facie case is made out,
of Sebi, which has decided to conduct accounting fraud” and “stock manipu- ing of the panel report with Sebi and the burden shifts to the accused,” held
further investigations into the alleged lation” by the Gautam Adani-led group. the PIL petitioners “to enable them to the panel.

NCLT rejects plea against Zee Adani stocks rally CBDT

Priyanka Gawande
after panel report
priyanka.gawande@livemint.com
MUMBAI
I
n a significant relief to broad-
caster Zee Entertainment
Enterprises, the Mumbai
bench of the National Com-
OpenAI Inc. is bringing its ChatGPT generative AI tool to pany Law Tribunal (NCLT) on
smartphones for the first time, releasing an iPhone version Friday rejected an insolvency
on Thursday and promising a service for Android devices petition filed against it by IDBI
in the future. The software, which is free, is now available Bank. On 15 December last
in the US for iOS devices through Apple Inc.’s App Store. year, the lender sought the ini-
With it, users can type questions and receive responses tiation of the corporate insol-
from the chatbot. BLOOMBERG vency resolution process
(CIRP) against Zee, alleging
default of a ₹149 crore loan.
‘Can’t demand immunity because However, after multiple
rounds of hearings, the NCLT
contract is in President’s name’ bench led by Justice Kishore
New Delhi: The Union of India cannot demand an immunity Vemulapalli and member Prab-
from the operation of pertinent legal provisions just because a hat Kumar, dismissed the peti-
contract is in the name of the President of India, the Supreme tion on Friday.“In view of the
Court ruled on Friday. A bench, comprising Chief Justice of India forgoing discussion, this bench
Dhananjaya Y. Chandrachud and justices P.S. Narasimha and J.B. is of the considered view that
Pardiwala, interpreted Article 299 of the Constitution to hold the present application is
that the central government, as a party to a contract, cannot wrig- barred by section 10A of the
gle out of statutory bars by arguing that the contract is in the Code.This application is also
name of the President of India. UTKARSH ANAND not maintainable on the
ground that it is not in accord-
ance with the intent and pur-
Govt urges traders to release port of the Code.The present
petition deserves to be dis-
imported pulses within one month missed,” the bench ruled.
New Delhi: The government asked pulse traders, especially of tur The public sector lender had
(arhar or pigeon pea) and urad (black gram), to not hold imported filed the petition under section
stocks beyond one month from the date of custom clearance. This 7 of the Insolvency and Bank-
comes against the backdrop of tur prices skyrocketing amid tight ruptcy Code (IBC), which
supply in the domestic market. PUJA DAS allows a financial creditor to file
Last year, IDBI sought CIRP
against Zee Ent MINT
an application for initiating
CIRP against a corporate
debtor before the adjudicating
authority. IDBI’s claim against
Zee arises out of a debt service
reserve account (DSRA) guar-
antee that it alleged Zee pro-
vided to secure loans provided
by IDBI to Siti Networks Ltd –
both were part of Essel Group.
IDBI insisted before the NCLT
that its claim is identical to that
of IndusInd and on that
ground, the application must
be permitted.
IndusInd Bank had filed a
similar application against
ZEE, which was admitted by
the NCLT on 22 February.
However, the National Com-
pany Law Appellate Tribunal
(NCLAT) granted relief against
the NCLT order to the media
company led by managing
director and chief executive
Puneet Goenka.
Later, Zee entered into a set-
tlement agreement with Indus-
Ind Bank, inching closer to its
planned merger with Sony Pic-
tures (Culver Max Entertain-
ment)
Both IndusInd’s claim and
IDBI’s claim were opposed by
Zee mainly on the grounds that
the guarantee was invoked dur-
ing the pandemic. Under Sec-
tion 10A of the IBC, insolvency
proceedings cannot be initi-
ated if the alleged default
occurred before the period of
25 March 2020 to 25 March
2021, which is termed as the
covid period. This statutory bar
has troubled financial creditors
because the insolvency pro-
ceeding can never be initiated
for the defaults during the
covid period. Zee’s stand was
also that the guarantee is a lim-
ited guarantee and does not
extend to the entire debt.
IDBI is also opposing Zee’s
merger with Sony.
Zee’s proposed merger with
Sony Pictures has been facing
legal hurdles due to the con-
stant opposition from various
parties including Axis Finance
and JC Flower ARC to name a
few.
spares
Ram Sahgal in the second half of trade.
many from
angel tax
Ram.sahgal@livemint.com Such was the impact of the
MUMBAI panel report’s release that
some of the group stocks ral-
purview
A
dani Group stocks lied from intraday lower cir-
recovered sharply from cuits to close near the upper
day lows after a circuit filters, or swing by
Supreme Court-appointed nearly 10%, in the closing FROM PAGE 18
panel prima facie found no hours of trade. Adani Trans-
evidence of stock price manip- mission recovered from the 5% hospitals or charities’ foreign
ulation as alleged by the Hin- lower circuit at ₹714.05 a share pension funds, and a broad-
denburg report. to close at ₹787.35, up 4.76%. based pooled investment vehi-
Two of the stocks which fell Similarly, Adani Total Gas, cle with over 50 investors,
well over 20% so far this which was frozen at the 5% “which is not a hedge fund or a
month – Adani lower circuit of fund which employs diverse or
Total Gas and Adani ₹633.35, which complex trading strategies”.
Adani Transmis- Transmission happened to also The government’s notifica-
sion – on being recovered from be a 52-week low, tion is likely to offer major relief
excluded from the 5% lower rallied in the last to the investment community,
the MSCI Stan-
circuit at ₹714.05 a hour of trade to which was concerned that the
dard Indices by close at Rs new tax could exacerbate the
global index pro- share to close at 688.10, up 3.22%. ongoing funding crunch within
vider MSCI also ₹787.35, up 4.76% The stocks are the tech ecosystem.
staged smart expected to wit- Mint first reported on 24
recoveries. ness a combined March that the government
The rally from day lows $360 mn of outflows from pas- was considering exempting
coincided with the market sive funds when the MSCI overseas funds as well as funds
recovery in the last hour-and- changes are effected by regulated by certain entities
a-half of trade, which was led month-end, according to like the International Financial
by Adani Enterprises and Nuvama brokerage. However, Services Centre Authority.
Adani Ports, two Nifty 50 the sentiment on them turned Companies that raise capital
stocks. Group flagship Adani sour with Adani Total having at a premium from exempt
Enterprises ended up 3.5% at fallen 27% so far this month, entities won’t have to pay angel
₹1,956 from the day’s low of closing of ₹688.10 while Adani tax. The tax authority has also
₹1,872.10. Adani Ports clocked Transmission has shed 23.5% proposed that an additional five
a 3.4% gain to close at ₹688.10 so far this month. valuation methodologies,
excluding discounted cash flow
and net asset value method
(which are currently in use),

Centre to exempt tax on forex Tighter credit Tata Motors loses tender, SC will be considered to value the
shares for the scope of angel
could mean a tax.

purchases of up to ₹7 lakh lower peak in rejects appeal against BEST There are other changes too.
“A key issue of the interplay of
angel tax and Foreign
Exchange Management Act
FROM PAGE 18 and cry was justified as even rates: Powell Alisha Sachdev (FEMA) was the price differen-
small international payments alisha.sachdev@livemint.com tial between resident and non-
Account Transactions Rules), could have been subject to Bloomberg New DelHI resident investors. FEMA
2000) will be issued sepa- TCS and would have severely feedback@livemint.com didn’t allow a non-resident to

T
rately,” the ministry said. impacted taxpayers as they he Supreme Court on acquire securities below FMV

Even now, online pur-
chases of goods and services
in forex by individuals, while
in India above the ₹7 lakh
threshold using either debit
or credit card, are covered
under the 5% TCS obligation.
If the payment is made in
rupees, for example, for the
subscription of a web stream-
ing service like Netflix, to the
Indian arm of the foreign par-
ent, it was any way out of the
TCS liability and was not to
come under TCS even after 1
July.
“If the payment is in rupee,
the bank does not have to do
currency conversion, and it is
not covered under LRS, and
no TCS is applicable,”
explained a government offi-
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Experts welcomed the order
to retain the ₹7 lakh threshold
for TCS on forex purchases HT
cial.
Experts welcomed the
decision to retain the ₹7 lakh
threshold for TCS on forex
purchases after 1 July.
“This is a welcome and
much-needed relief. The hue
would have to wait till the
time of filing of return to get
the refund or adjust the
same,” said Sandeep Sehgal,
partner—tax at AKM Global,
an accounting firm.
Earlier this week, the
finance ministry changed a
rule under Foreign Exchange
Management Act (FEMA)
effective from Tuesday,
bringing the use of credit
cards abroad for expenses by
individuals during a foreign
visit under the RBI’s
US$250,000 cap under the
LRS.
That rule change also
meant such use of credit cards
abroad is under a 5% TCS levy
immediately, which will go up
to 20% from 1 July.
F
ederal Reserve Chair Jer-
ome Powell said tighter
credit conditions stem-
ming from strains in the bank-
ing system could mean interest
rates don’t have to rise as high
as would otherwise be the case.
“While the financial stability
tools helped to calm conditions
in the banking sector, develop-
ments there on the other hand
are contributing to tighter
credit conditions and are likely
to weigh on economic growth,
hiring and inflation,” Powell
told a Fed conference Friday in
Washington. “As a result our
policy rate may not need to rise
as much as it would have other-
wise to achieve our goals. Of
course, the extent of that is
highly uncertain,” he said.
Friday dismissed a plea
by Tata Motors challeng-
ing a decision by the Brihan-
mumbai Electric Supply and
Transport (BEST), Mumbai’s
civic transport body, to disqual-
ify it from a 2022 tender for
2,100 electric buses on “arbi-
trary grounds”. The appeal
alleged BEST had favoured
rival Evey Trans, the opera-
tional arm of e-bus maker Olec-
tra Greentech.
The Court upheld BEST’s
decision to award the contract
for 2,100 single-decker AC
electric buses to Evey Trans,
and has set aside an earlier
order by the Bombay High
Court directing BEST to issue a
fresh tender.
“We are of the view that the
The automaker had alleged BEST favoured rival Evey Trans
High Court should have been a
bit slow and circumspect in
reversing the action of BEST
permitting Evey to submit a
revised Annexure Y. We are of
the view that the BEST com-
mitted no error or cannot be
held guilty of favoritism, etc. in
allowing Evey to submit a
revised Annexure Y as the ear-
lier one was incorrect on
account of a clerical error. This
exercise itself was not sufficient
to declare the entire bid offered
by Evey as unlawful or illegal,”
the apex court said in its judg-
ment.“
Accordingly, Evey Trans will
now execute the contract
according to contractual terms
entered with the BEST,” it said.
Tata Motors had submitted
its technical and financial bid
for the tender on 25 April.
(fair market value), while angel
tax didn’t allow a company to
issue shares above fair market
value. Now, price matching
with venture capital funds will
be taken as the fair market
value,” said Siddarth Pai,
co-founder of 3one4 capital
and co-chair of the regulatory
affairs committee of the Indian
Private Equity and Venture
Capital Association.
“Previously, even a small dif-
ference could trigger angel tax.
The government has now spec-
ified 10% variation as accepta-
ble,” Pai said.
Further, valuation reports
now have a valid tenure of 90
days from the previously
unspecified time period, he
added.
 Saturday, 20 May 2023
MuMbai 15

SEPSET CONSTRUCTIONS LIMITED

CIN: U45300DL2007PLC163109

Extracts of Audited financial result for the quarter and year ended 31 March 2023
(Rs.in thousands except per share data)
Quarter ended Year ended
Sr.
Particulars 31 March 2023 31 March 2022 31 March 2023 31 March 2022
No.
(Audited) (Audited) (Audited) (Audited)
1 Total Income from Operations 1,35,840.25 1,34,173.95 4,96,758.76 4,99,823.08
2 Net Profit/ (Loss) for the period (before Tax, Exceptional
53,045.49 53,671.26 1,01,160.27 1,03,385.88
and/ or Extraordinary items)
3 Net Profit/ (Loss) for the period before Tax, (after
53,045.49 53,671.26 1,01,160.27 1,03,385.88
Exceptional and/ or Extraordinary items)
4 Net Profit/ (Loss) for the period after tax (after
40,057.49 35,230.52 77,694.85 72,654.10
Exceptional and/ or Extraordinary items)
5 Total Comprehensive Income for the period [Comprising
Profit/ (Loss) for the period (after tax) and Other 40,057.49 35,230.52 77,694.85 72,654.10
Comprehensive Income (after tax)]
6 Paid up equity share capital (Face Value of Rs.10/- each) 2,34,154.36 2,34,154.36 2,34,154.36 2,34,154.36
7 Reserve (Excluding Revaluation Reserve) 6,42,831.59 5,65,136.74 6,42,831.59 5,65,136.74
8 Securities Premium Account - - - -
9 Net Worth 50,275.16 (27,419.69) 50,275.16 (27,419.69)
10 Paid up Debt Capital/ Outstanding Debt 17,74,401.12 18,80,975.43 17,74,401.12 18,80,975.43
11 Outstanding Redeemable Preference Shares - - - -
12 Debt Equity Ratio 2.02 2.35 2.02 2.35
13 Earning Per Share (Face value of Rs.10/- each)*
Basic earnings per equity share (Rs.) 1.71 1.50 3.32 3.10
Diluted earnings per equity share (Rs.) 1.71 1.50 3.32 3.10
14 Capital Redemption Reserve - - - -
15 Debenture Redemption Reserve 1,50,348.95 72,654.10 1,50,348.95 72,654.10
16 Debt Service Coverage Ratio 1.73 1.71 1.73 1.71
17 Interest Service Coverage Ratio 3.34 2.96 3.34 2.96
*The earnings per equity share are not annualised except for year ended 31 March 2023 and 31 March 2022.
I F¹FFÊ»F¹F, ³F¦FS ´FFd»FI d³F¦F¸F, ·Fû´FF»F Notes:
a) The above is an extract of the detailed format of annual audited financial results filed with the stock exchange under regulations 52 of SEBI (Listing
d½Fôb°F VFF£FF Obligations and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations 2015. The full format of the annual audited financials results is available on the websites
´Fi±F¸F °F»F, AFBÊ.EÀF.¶Fe.Me. ·F½F³F, WûVFa¦FF¶FFQ SûO, W¶Fe¶F¦FaªF, ·Fû´FF»F-462011 of BSE Limited at (www.bseindia.com) and of the Company (www.sembcorpindia.com/sepset.html).

Ii . 65/d½F.VFF./2023 d³Fd½FQF AF¸FaÂF¯F §Fû¿F¯FF-´FÂF ·Fû´FF»F, dQ³FFaI 18.05.2023 b) For the other line items referred in Regulations 52 (4) of SEBI (Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations 2015, pertinent
disclosures have been made to the Stock Exchange and are available on the website of the Company (www.sembcorpindia.com/sepset.html).
d³F¸³Fd»Fd£F°F I F¹FÊ WZ °Fb Qû d»FR FR F ´Fðd°F IZ A³FbÀFFS ¸FûWS¶FaQ d³Fd½FQF¹FZÔ d³F²FFÊdS°F ´Fi´FÂF ´FS AF³F»FFBÊ ³F AF¸FadÂF°F I e ªFF°Fe W` Ü c) The above financial results have been reviewed and approved by the Board of Directors of the Company at its meeting held on 18 May 2023. The
Ii . AFG³F»FFBÊ ³F I F¹FÊ À±F»F I F ³FF¸F ²FSûWS d³Fd½FQF NZ IZ QFS I F¹FÊ WZ °Fb I F¹FÊ Statutory Auditors of the Company have carried out audit of the results for the quarter and year ended 31 March 2023.
MZ ¯OS SFdVF ´Fi´FÂF I e Ie d³F²FFÊdS°F Ie For and on behalf of Board of Directors of,
³Fa. I e¸F°F ßFZ¯Fe EÀFAûAFS A½Fd²F Sepset Constructions Limited
1 2023_ Appointment of Agency for Maintaining Power 75,000/- 12,500/- As per as NON 6 Sd/-
UAD_ Factor of Various HT Connections of Bhopal Tender SOR Months Mahendra Gottipati
252025_2 Municipal Corporation, Bhopal (Second Call) Document ITEM
Place: Gurugram Director
d³F¹F¸F E½Fa VF°FZË :- Date: 18 May 2023 DIN: 09824710
1. d³Fd½FQF ´Fi´FÂF I e d³F²FFÊdS°F SFdVF E½Fa ²FSûWS SFdVF E½Fa A³¹F AF½FV¹FI QÀ°FF½FZªF AFG³F»FFBÊ ³F ´FiÀ°Fb°F I S³FZ WûÔ¦FZÜ A³¹F
ÀF¸FÀ°F d½FÀ°FÈ°F ªFF³FI FSe www.mptenders.gov.in ´FS QZ£Fe ªFF ÀFI °Fe W` Ü Registered address: M-18, Diwan House, Ajay Enclave New Delhi-110018
2. dI ÀFe ·Fe d³Fd½FQF I û À½FeI FS A±F½FF AÀ½FeI FS I S³FZ I F Ad²FI FS d½F·FF¦F IZ ´FFÀF ÀFbS dÃF°F Wû¦FFÜ Corporate Office Address: 5th Floor, Tower C, Building No. 8, DLF Cybercity, Gurugram, Haryana- 122002, Tel: +91-124 389 6700/01, Fax: +91-124 389 6710
Email ID: corp.secretarial@sembcorp.com; https://www.sembcorpindia.com/sepset.html
I F¹FÊ´FF»F³F ¹FaÂFe (d½Fôb°F)
d³F.Ii . 315/023/024 ³F¦FS d³F¦F¸F, ·Fû´FF»F

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 16 Saturday, 20 May 2023
MuMbai NEWS LIVEMINT.COM

Zetwerk
BGMI’s return may
spur investments,
RBI dividend hits ₹87,416 cr, raises
gaming prize money 82% above budget estimate $100mn
from Avenir
Abhijit Ahaskar
abhijit.ahaskar@livemint.com Ranjani Raghavan
NEW DELHI ranjani.raghavan@livemint.com
Central bank’s board also decided to raise contingency risk buffer to 6% from last year’s 5.5%
T Z
he gaming industry has etwerk Manufacturing
welcomed the return of Business Pvt Ltd has
Battlegrounds Mobile Shayan Ghosh agreed to raise fresh cap-
India (BGMI), a mobile game shayan.g@livemint.com Dividend deluge ital of over $100 million from
that was banned by the gov- MUMBAI Bumper profits from forex sales, existing investor Avenir
ernment in July last year. The higher interest income led to the Growth Capital, according to

T
game, which is run by South he Reserve Bank of India’s windfall payout. two people familiar with the
Korean Krafton Inc, is a spin- (RBI) central board on Friday Surplus transfer to government (in  cr) development.
off of PlayerUnknown’s Battle- approved the transfer of 1,80,000
Avenir is also acquiring
ground Mobile (PUBG The ban impacted several ₹87,416 crore as surplus to the shares from secondary inves-
Mobile), which was banned by gaming companies in India. AFP government for FY23, sur- tors, in addition to investing
the government earlier. passing the budget estimate by 82%. directly in the company, the
1,50,000
According to experts, BGMI the government bringing The union budget estimated an people cited above said.
was among the most success- these safety measures for the aggregate dividend of ₹48,000 crore The primary and secondary
ful mobile games ever in the youth of the country,” said from the RBI and public sector lenders. shares were sold at a valuation
1,20,000
Indian market, and led to sig- Lokesh Suji, director, Esports The large surplus transfer by the central similar to Zetwerk’s previous
nificant investments in the Federation of India & vice bank would help the government man- 87,416 round, one of the people cited
industry. president of the Asian Esports age its fiscal math, economists said. above said. Zetwerk last raised
Before BGMI, tournaments Federation, calling the game’s Last year, the central bank trans- 90,000 capital at a valuation of $2.7 bil-
built around PUBG used to return a “much-needed boost” ferred a surplus of ₹30,307 crore to the lion in December 2021. The
have crores of rupees in prize for the Indian esports commu- Centre. total deal size is around $100
money, and BGMI followed in nity. Experts estimated a high dividend 60,000 million to $200 million.
that game’s footsteps. Prior to being taken down payout in FY23 on the back of bumper A Competition Commission
As a result, the govern- from Play Store and App Store, profits from forex sales and higher inter- of India filing on Friday said
ment’s ban hurt revenues for BGMI had amassed over 100 est income. On Friday, the RBI board 30,000
33,010 Avenir is acquiring a 2.96%
many gaming firms, including million users, while its esports also decided to raise the contingency stake in Zetwerk, but did not
large ones like tournaments risk buffer to 6% from 5.5% last year. give other details.
Nazara Technol- According to attracted 200 Some analysts had estimated a larger 0 A Zetwerk spokesperson
ogies. Krafton, prior to million viewers, surplus transfer of ₹80,000-95,000 2012-13 2022-23 confirmed that the company is
Krafton Inc being taken down according to crore. Madhavi Arora, lead economist, The Budget estimated an aggregate dividend of ₹48,000 crore from RBI and Source: RBI in the final phase of completing
India, the subsid- from Play Store, Krafton. At the Emkay Global Financial Services, said public sector lenders. MINT a new equity round. The
iary of South time of the ban, the fact that the RBI increased the con- spokesperson said the round
BGMI had
Korean video professional tingency buffer as a percentage of the tion implies that FY24 nominal GDP as this will not lead to higher market approved the annual report and will see new and existing inves-
game developer amassed over 100 g a m e r s and balance sheet from 5.5 to 6% probably growth could be lower than the 10.9% borrowings,” said Madan Sabnavis, chief accounts of the Reserve Bank for the tors, without giving details.
Krafton Inc, million users eSports firms had led to the dividend remaining at the figure assumed in the Union Budget. economist at Bank of Baroda. accounting year 2022-23,” it said in a “This infusion of funds will
announced on expressed con- lower end of the expected range. Others said that a higher RBI divi- Meanwhile, the RBI said on Friday statement. allow Zetwerk to accelerate its
Friday that it will cerns over the Arora said that while the RBI has dend is not the only large payout that that its board also reviewed the global In 2019, the RBI had transferred ₹1.76 growth plans, build cutting-
soon relaunch BGMI in the void it would create in the nas- made good profits on the sale of foreign will aid the government, as state-run and domestic economic situation and trillion to the government. The transfer edge tools and technologies,
country after getting a go cent competitive gaming seg- exchange, it has encountered losses comprised ₹1.23 trillion of surplus expand its global presence, and
ahead. “We are grateful to ment in India. on its mark-to-market books and NEw HIgH for 2018-19 and ₹52,637 crore of further strengthen its position
Indian authorities for allowing “There has been a dry spell foreign securities, leading to higher excess provisions identified as per as a market leader across vari-
us to resume operations of in the mobile competitive sce- provisioning. THE dividend LAST year, the IN 2019, RBI had THE surplus transfer the revised Economic Capital ous industrial and consumer
BGMI. It will be available for nario for a while now, and this From a fiscal perspective, the div- represents
additional revenue
central bank transferred ₹1.76 tn
transferred a surplus to govt. The transfer
by the RBI would aid
the government in
Framework. manufacturing categories,” the
download soon,” said Sean announcement is definitely idend represents additional reve- of 0.2% of the gross of ₹30,307 crore to included ₹1.23 tn of managing its fiscal This was in line with the recom- company spokesperson added.
Hyunil Sohn, CEO of Krafton making many stakeholders nue of 0.2% of the gross domestic domestic product the Centre surplus for 2018-19 math mendations of the committee under Avenir did not respond to
Inc India. happy. Tournaments of all product, said Gaura Sengupta, India former central bank governor Bimal requests for comments. Avenir
“While the game is set to scales can restart, and players/ economist at IDFC First Bank. Jalan. had last invested in 2019.
undergo certain changes to content creators who have “However, it may be too early to say banks have also had a good year. “Add to associated challenges, including the The committee had recommended a Zetwerk offers manufactur-
ensure a safe and enjoyable been on pause can resume,” with certainty that FY24 fiscal deficit this the possible higher dividend pay- impact of current global geopolitical surplus distribution policy, which tar- ing services to sectors such as
gaming experience for users said Rohit Agarwal, founder will undershoot the 5.9% GDP target,” ments by the oil marketing companies developments.“The board also dis- gets the level of realized equity to be consumer goods, apparel,
upon its comeback on a trial and director of Alpha Zegus, said Sengupta. (OMCs), and the situation appears quite cussed the working of the RBI during maintained by the RBI within the over- defence, space and aerospace,
period, it is encouraging to see an influencer marketing firm. She said the sharp reduction in infla- comfortable from a market perspective the year April 2022 to March 2023 and all level of its economic capital. according to its website.

Japan’s digital Siemens sells geared motor biz to parent for ₹2,200 cr ‘Shein deal will not
minister says
keen to join
Mihir Mishra
mihir.mishra@livemint.com
we are moving into as also our charging infrastructure in
digital portfolio, where we have India.
need FDI approval’
got solutions.” Mass-Tech is engaged in
UPI network Ravi Dutta Mishra

S
iemens Ltd’s board has Mathur said the firm carried design, engineering and manu- says that a Indian app which
approved the divestiture out an independent valuation facturing of a wide range of AC ravi.dutt@livemint.com will be built by RRVL will have
Gulveen Aulakh of its geared motors and of its businesses, which threw chargers, and 30 to 300kW a wall between the domestic

C
gulveen.aulakh@livemint.com low voltage business, including up a valuation figure of ₹2,070 capacity DC chargers for vari- hinese online fast-fash- and global app. If in the future,
related customer service oper- crore to ₹2,165 crore. ous end applications for EVs. ion retailer Shein won’t investment comes from Shein

J
apan is actively exploring
adopting the unified pay-
ments interface network, as
part of an effort by both gov-
ernments to foster digital coop-
eration and establish interoper-
ability in digital payments to
facilitate seamless cross-border
transactions and enhance the
convenience of payment mech-
anisms. “Japan and India are
trying to promote digital coop-
eration. We are seriously think-
ing about joining India’s UPI
payment system,” Japan’s min-
ister for digital affairs Kono Taro
told Wion on Thursday.
Taro’s comments follow a 23
March interview with Mint,
where he said that Japan will be
sending a team to India to study
UPI platform, and will eventu-
ally consider linking the net-
work if Japan were to adopt UPI.
Taro had also spoken about
cooperating with India on the
security of telecommunication
systems. In his views to Wion, he
said the convenience of UPI
payments system could be used
for cross-border payments once
it is also adopted by countries
ations, to Siemens Large Drives
India Pvt Ltd, a wholly-owned
subsidiary of Siemens AG. The
transaction is valued at ₹2,200
crore, according to a company
statement on Friday.
The transaction, effective 1
October, is subject to fulfilment
of all conditions agreed
between the parties, including
necessary approvals by share-
holders, and statutory and reg-
ulatory authorities, it added.
The company has decided to
distribute the proceeds as spe-
cial dividend among share-
holders after applicable taxes.
“Here basically the rationale
is Germany globally decided to
carve out low voltage motors
and geared motors business
into a legally separate com-
Netflix, Amazon addiction creates Yen hassle
Bloomberg
feedback@livemint.com
“The board decided to The purchase consideration require foreign direct India, press note 3 would be
increase it to ₹2,200 crore to is ₹38 crore on a cash free and investment (FDI) approval for applicable,” said a government
safeguard the debt free basis, its partnership with Reliance official, requesting anonymity.
interests of The company has and will be subject Retail Ventures Ltd, consider- “RRVL has only bought the
MD and CEO Sunil Mathur said Siemens is heavily investing and minority share- decided to to mutually ing that it will not hold equity licence and the platform. The
focusing on the mobility business. MINT holders,” he said. distribute agreed upon in the new operations, govern- agreement between the com-
The valuation proceeds as adjustments ment officials said on Friday. pany says that the profits will
pany. This is their decision to since it is with the parent.” was reviewed by
special dividend between the two The entity will be controlled be shared when this subsidiary
form a new company, Inno- On other focus areas, Mathur an independent parties. by a wholly-owned subsidiary makes profit,” he added.
motics GmbH (Germany),” said said it is heavily investing and banker, who has after applicable “This acquisi- of Reliance Retail, they added. Mint reported that India is
Sunil Mathur, managing focusing on the mobility busi- given his recom- taxes tion gives us the But, if Shein planning to crack
director and chief executive, ness. mendations and ability to provide decides to invest DPIIT is keeping a down on Chinese
Siemens India. “We have just won a large the board made its charging stations in India, it would close watch on companies trying
The company may be mov- order of ₹26,000 crore for valuation calculations based on that are approved and meet require clearance Chinese to bypass govern-
ing out of a ‘sunrise sector’ but locomotives. We have two elec- that recommendation. immediate regulatory require- under press note automobile ment policies that
the sector is not innovative, he trification projects in various In a separate development, ments and really scale this up in 3, an amendment require approval
manufacturers
said. “If the parent decides that metro and Vande Bharat pro- Siemens signed an agreement the country for electric buses which was intro- for investments
they would like to move out of jects. We have performed the on Friday to but the EV arm of and so on. So, it’s a business that duced in the FDI having ties with from countries
the business either through an entire safety, security, fire Mumbai-headquartered Mass- we can take and scale up first in policy in 2020. proxy partners sharing land bor-
IPO or find a strategic buyer for safety and electrification of the Tech Controls Pvt Ltd, which India and possibly, thereafter, Amid heightened ders with India by
it...The Intellectual Property new Parliament building. So, all will help it meet the increasing as part of a global supply chain,” Sino-India ten- forging ties with
Rights will move with that of these are the focus areas that demand for electric vehicle Mathur signed off. sions, the Centre had made an Indian shell firms to get subsi-
amendment to prevent poten- dies, especially in the rapidly
tially exploitative takeovers of growing electric vehicle mar-
domestic firm by Chinese enti- ket. The Department for Pro-
ties. The revised policy man- motion of Industry and Inter-
dates approval for investments nal Trade is keeping a close
from countries that share land watch on all Chinese automo-
borders with India. bile manufacturers having ties
rency, strategists Lhamsuren unchanged, the strategists The yen is on track to repeat cit is expected to put pressure “Ownership and control of with suspected Indian proxy
Sharavdemberel and Shini- said. as the second-worst Group- on the yen, the Barclays strate- the platform will remain with partners. However, the enti-
chiro Kadota wrote in a note Netflix launched a signifi- of-10 currency this year, falling gists expect the increase in the RRVL subsidiary, a 100% ties do not have strategic plans

like the UAE or Singapore,
which have also evinced inter-
est. “It is very convenient for
payment. Well, we can increase
the interoperability of the pay-
ment system between Japan
and India or other countries
such as Singapore, Thailand or
the UAE, if they also join. It
could emerge as a standard for
cross-border tele payment sys-
tems.” Japan is looking to mutu-
ally recognizing the Indian digi-
tal identity programme, that will
create the bedrock for interop-
erability, he added.
A
n increasing flow of
Japanese money over-
seas to pay for services
like video and music streaming
is turning into a structural
weight on the yen, according
to Barclays Plc.
Japan’s so-called “digital
deficit,” stemming from pay-
ments to overseas technology
companies like Netflix Inc and
Amazon.com Inc, has
increased relative to trade and
travel in its current-account
balance and continued growth
will pressure the local cur-
Thursday.
It reached ¥4.8 trillion
($34.7 billion) last year, almost
90% of Japan’s services
account deficit, they said.
Mounting demand for home
entertainment during the pan-
demic has been sustained in
the east Asian nation with the
likes of Netflix, Amazon and
Walt Disney Co key beneficia-
ries, according to the report.
That growth suggests outgo-
ings to those and similar firms
look set to climb, even if their
market share remains
cant increase in Japanese con- more than 5% against the dol- inbound tourism to Japan to Indian firm. The agreement to build capabilities in India.
tent in 2021, lar amid receding counteract the weakness this
including anime, Yen tumbled to a speculation the year. CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS
live action and three-decade low Bank of Japan will Together with a combina-
animated feature as a significant deliver an early tion of lower commodity prices Mint welcomes comments, suggestions or complaints about errors.
films. “This digital trade deficit and tweak to its super- and their expectation that the
deficit appears to Readers can alert the newsroom to any errors in the paper by
widening interest- easy monetary Bank of Japan will tweak policy
emailing us, with your full name and address to
reflect a struc- policy. suggests dollar-yen could fall
tural change in rate gap with the
feedback@livemint.com.
The Japanese to 123 in the first quarter of
the behaviour of US weighed currency tumbled 2024, they said. It traded It is our policy to promptly respond to all complaints. Readers
consumers and to a three-decade around 138.30 on Friday. dissatisfied with the response or concerned about Mint’s journalistic
businesses, sug- low last year as a “The digital deficit is a struc- integrity may write directly to the editor by sending an email to
gesting it will persist,” the Bar- significant trade deficit and tural yen selling factor, but asktheeditor@livemint.com
clays team wrote. “That widening interest-rate gap travel account improvement is
Mint’s journalistic Code of Conduct that governs our newsroom is
implies an increase in yen-sell- with the US weighed. likely to have a greater impact available at www.livemint.com
ing pressure.” Still, while the services defi- in 2023,” they said.

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First published in February 2007 to serve as an unbiased and clear-minded chronicler of the Indian Dream.

SRUTHIJITH KURUPICHANKANDY (EDITOR); PUBLISHED/PRINTED BY MANHAR KAPOOR ON BEHALF OF HT MEDIA LTD, 9th Floor, Tower 3, Indiabulls Finance Centre, Senapati Bapat Marg, Elphinstone Road (West), Mumbai-400013
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This PDF was uploade To Telegram channel_ LBS Newspaper platform (https://t.me/LBSNEWSPAPER) @LBSNEWSPAPER
 LIVEMINT.COM NEWS Saturday, 20 May 2023
MuMbai 17

Tesla revives import Byju’s lenders sue to take reins of US arm

Ranjani Raghavan report on court proceedings

duty talks with India on 18 May.

ranjani.raghavan@livemint.com
nEw dElHi Glas Trust Co, the adminis-
trative agent and the collat-

B
yju’s lenders have taken
legal action against the
edtech behemoth,
seeking control over the oper-
ations of US subsidiary, Byju’s
Over a year ago, talks on lowering duties for EVs had hit a roadblock Alpha, alleging that it had
transferred a sum of $500
million out of the subsidiary.
Alisha Sachdev Byju’s, however, defended its
alisha.sachdev@livemint.com actions, asserting that it had
nEw dElHi not violated any credit agree-
ment.
eral agent to Byju’s lenders
has filed the lawsuit naming
Byju’s Alpha, Riju Raveen-
dran, the brother of founder
Byju Raveendran and Tangi-
ble Play Inc, the report added.
Tangible owns children’s
educational gamemaker
Osmo which Byju’s had
acquired in 2019 for $120 mil-
In 2021, Byju’s parent company had secured a significant $1.2 billion lion.
term loan B deal from overseas lenders. BLOOMBERG “Byju’s has fulfilled its con-

A
merican electric car maker In November 2021, Byju’s tractual payment obligations
Tesla is once again negotiating parent, Think & Learn Pvt According to the spokes- categorically deny these alle- as agreed upon in the term
an import duty reduction on Ltd, had secured a significant person Byju’s Alpha is “a non- gations. The transfers were in loan B signed in 2021 and has
electric cars with the Indian $1.2 billion term loan B deal operative US entity which was full compliance of and did not not missed a single payment.
government, reinstating its from overseas lenders. set up to receive the Term contravene any terms of the There have been no monetary
previous position of wanting to test The conflict escalated due Loan B, with no employees”. parties’ credit agreement and defaults on the loan. The len-
demand in the market before setting up to the renegotiations over the The loan was raised with the the agreed-upon rights and ders’ allegations (which we
manufacturing here. interest rates and partial pre- specific purpose to drive responsibilities. In fact, even dispute) concern merely
Over a year ago, talks between the payment proposals that was growth and expand globally lenders have not alleged that insignificant technical and
world’s largest-selling passenger EV maker triggered by a breach in cove- and Byju’s “is free to transfer the transfer was not permit- non-monetary defaults,”
and the Centre reached a stalemate as the nants after Byju’s failed to and use the funds as neces- ted under the parties’ existing Byju’s said on Friday.
government refused to consider its submit its financial state- sary”, he added. contractual arrangement.” Although the firm did not
demand for lowering duties on imported ments for the financial year “The litigants have made “Lenders have claimed that offer any clarifications on the
electric cars unless it firmly committed to 2022 by September last year. bewildering claims that Byju’s because of a default earlier nature of technical defaults, a
setting up a manufacturing facility in the “An interim court order has “moved” $500 million from this year , they have the right person in the know said *one
country. asked to maintain “status quo Byju’s Alpha, insinuating that to put their representative of them stems from the non-
However, people with knowledge of the in relation to Byju’s Alpha,” a it was somehow wrongful. Timothy R. Pohl in charge,” disclosure of FY22 financial
matter indicate that Tesla’s position is now Byju’s spokesperson said. This is entirely incorrect. We according to a Bloomberg statements.
less conservative than it was earlier, as the Tesla is exploring manufacturing in various South East Asian regions that have emerged
company explores manufacturing in vari- as significant electric car markets over the past decade. BLOOMBERG
ous South East Asian regions that have
emerged as significant electric car markets all of its key electric components like bat- world’s largest markets, of which India is a
over the past decade.
Nonetheless, Tesla still requires an
teries and motors, and software in-house. significant piece”, a person privy to Tesla’s
For instance, Tesla has set up a gigafac- India operations said.
Brookfield, GIC to co-invest in real estate
import duty exemption to properly assess tory in Germany despite it being a low-tariff “There is no discussion to be had with
both the demand for their vehicles and the nation because of widespread demand for the government if it isn’t about negotiating Sneha Shah & Mayur Bhalerao Gurugram were bought from the release said. increase in total leasable space
feasibility of establishing a production the vehicles in the European nation and its lower duties. If the idea was to only manu- mumBAi Unitech Group for ₹3,500 “Growing and diversifying and a 44% increase in operating
plant in the region. surrounding countries, he added. “We can- facture, they’d just come and set up,” the crore in 2014. “Brookfield our India REIT portfolio via area, the acquisition signifi-

B
Historically, Tesla has never not be certain what timelines Tesla source added. rookfield India Real India REIT and GIC will accretive transactions is part of cantly scales the Brookfield
entered a new market via manu- is considering to set up manu- “The company had also made it clear Estate Investments Trust acquire two large commercial our long-term strategy. This India REIT portfolio,” the
facturing before being able to facturing in India, but it will be when it was lobbying for an import duty cut and the Singapore gov- assets (totalling unique partner- release said. “We expect
launch its products and ser-
vice network in it first. Most 20 mn
Tesla’s goal for
some time away. The market with the government that it does not want
and infrastructure in India a preferential duty waiver only for its own.
ernment’s sovereign wealth
fund will together acquire $1.4
6.5 million sq ft)
from Brookfield
The transaction
will increase the
ship furthers our
global partner-
growth in the India office sec-
tor to continue, driven by an
recently, the company has need to develop as well.” It will welcome a move to lower tariffs for all billion worth of commercial Asset Manage- gross asset value ship with GIC in established IT industry,
started to export its EVs to global EV sales “Tesla’s renewing its talks stakeholders. Eventually, once foreign car- real estate assets in Mumbai ment’s private India,” said Ankur increased focus by global cor-
of Brookfield
Malaysia, where it is also set- by 2030 with India at a time the fore- makers see enough demand for their EVs in and Gurugram, the firms said in real estate funds Gupta, managing porations on digital adoption,
India’s Real
ting up a Supercharger net- cast for growth in other mar- India, they too will find it favourable to a joint release. in an equal part- partner, head of and the availability of skilled
work and experience centres. kets is uncertain. The fundamen- invest in local manufacturing. So, Tesla’s The acquisition will give exit nership. The Estate Trust to real estate, APAC talent. These acquisitions are
“Tesla’s integrated manufacturing tals of its earlier challenges in India entry to India via the import-route won’t be to Brookfield’s real estate pri- acquisition $3.5 billion region, Brook- testament to our confidence in
set-up, which is unlike any other OEM’s remain the same, though it may be more a threat to Indian carmakers,” they said. vate equity division that held includes com- field. According the India office sector, as well as
assembly-like operation, depends on visi- flexible and practical in the conversations However, Tesla is intent on eventually the assets for more than seven mercial proper- to the firm, the the wider Indian market, and
bility for large-scale demand, irrespective it is now having. Elon Musk has set out on setting up manufacturing in India and years. Brookfield had acquired ties in Brookfield’s Downtown transaction will increase the will add to the diversification of
of the tariff regime in a country,” people an ambitious goal to achieve 20 million EV wouldn’t want to build an imports-led busi- the Mumbai assets in down- Powai, Mumbai and Candor gross asset value of Brookfield GIC’s global office portfolio,”
with knowledge of the discussions told sales globally by 2030. To do that the com- ness in the country which is poised to town Powai from Hiranandani TechSpace, Sector 48, Guru- India Real Estate Trust to US said Kishore Gotety, co-head of
Mint. pany will need to set up more manufactur- become one of the largest markets for EVs Group for $1 billion in 2016. gram, for a combined enter- $3.5 billion and the net asset Real Estate, Asia ex-China, GIC.
Tesla is well-known for manufacturing ing capacity and tap demand in some of the by the turn of the decade. The Candor properties in prise value of US$1.4 billion,” value to $2 billion. “With a 35% sneha.shah@livemint.com

PNB’s standalone profit jumps JSW Steel Q4 profit up 12%

477%; asset quality improves Ujjval Jauhari
ujjval.j@livemint.com
sequentially. These were also
driven by higher exports post
the removal of export duty dur-
Staff writer

J
down 208 bps from a year ear- SW Steel Ltd on Friday ing Q3. On a y-o-y basis sales
feedback@livemint.com lier to 2.72% as of March 2023. reported a good fourth volumes were up 9% which the
PNB’s focus on risk manage- quarter, riding on rising company attributed to higher

S
tate-owned lender Pun- ment is evident in its provision steel realisations and pro- domestic sales.
jab National Bank (PNB) coverage ratio, which includes duction, and declining energy Revenue from operations at
recorded a 477% jump in technical write-offs. The ratio costs. ₹46,962 crore was up 20%
standalone net profit for the saw a significant improvement Consolidated net profit at sequentially though it came flat
March quarter, demonstrating of 530 bps from a year earlier, ₹3,741 crore during Q4—after on a y-o-y basis.
Zomato’s operating revenue during the March quarter rose 70% robust growth. The bank’s net to 86.90%, up from 81.60% in incorporating the financials of Revenue from operations
from a year ago to ₹2,056 crore. MINT profit was at ₹1,159 crore com- March 2022, indicating PNB’s subsidiaries, joint ventures and during FY23 at ₹165,960 crore
pared to ₹201 crore in the year- efforts to enhance provision- associates—improved signifi- was up 13% y-o-y. Net profit at

Zomato narrows ago period.

PNB’s performance reflects
strong momentum and resil-
PNB’s operating profit stood at
ing for potential loan loss and
strengthen its asset quality.
Besides, its credit cost saw a
cantly from ₹474 crore in the
previous quarter and rose
nearly 12% from the ₹3,343
Steel sales for the quarter
stood at 6.53 MT. BLOOMBERG
₹4,139 crore for FY23 however
was sharply lower than the
₹20,938 crore in FY22. The

loss by nearly half ience, notwithstanding a chal-

lenging economic environ-
ment, and came a day after the
₹5,866 cr for the quarter. MINT

cial indicators. Its global net

State Bank of India, the coun-
in March quarter try’s largest bank, announcing
record-breaking annual profit
of ₹50,232 crore and Q4 profit
Aman Rawat driven by the company’s food of ₹16,695 crore.
aman.rawat@livemint.com delivery segment, which deliv- PNB’s operating profit stood
ered an adjusted Ebitda of ₹78 at ₹5,866 crore for the quarter,
interest margin (NIM) rose by
48 basis points to 3.24% in Q4
FY23 from 2.76% in the year
ago, indicating enhanced prof-
itability and effective manage-
ment of interest rate spreads.
Additionally, it improved its
decline of 73 bps from the year
ago to 1.72% in Q4, reflecting
effective control over its credit
risks and loan delinquencies.
Its global business grew by
₹2,34,522 crore, or 12.14%, to
₹21,65,844 crore compared to
₹19,31,322 crore a year earlier.
Its global deposits rose 11.77%
from a year earlier to ₹12,81,163
crore a year ago. Net profit beat
Bloomberg consensus estimates
of ₹2068.5 crore.
On a year-on-year basis, ris-
ing steel sales volumes and
improved performance of sub-
sidiaries helped, though steel
prices still remained weaker
than the same quarter last year.
The year-ago quarter had seen
tially and the margin of 16.9% in
Q4 marked an improvement
over 11.6%. However, the oper-
ating Ebitda was still lower than
₹9,184 crore a year ago on the
back of lower steel prices.
Crude steel production at
the consolidated level, at 6.58
million tonnes (MT), was up
13% on year and 7% sequen-
decline is attributed to the fall
in steel prices witnessed
throughout FY23 and a sharp
rise in raw material costs.
JSW steel said that while the
global economic scenario
remains challenging, India is
seeing healthy steel demand
growth, which will support jts
performance in the coming

H
omegrown food deliv- crore in the quarter. Zomato up 11.4% from a year ago. Fur- asset quality, with gross non- crore as of March 2023, while a sharp rise in steel prices post tially, which the company quarters.
ery platform Zomato said the difference between thermore, net interest income performing asset (GNPA) ratio global advances increased by the start of the Russia-Ukraine attributed to the ramp-up of Meanwhile, deputy MD Jay-
narrowed its net losses adjusted Ebitda and net profit saw a significant rise of 30.05% falling 304 bps to 8.74% in 12.68% to ₹8,84,681 crore. war. Consolidated operating Dolvi Phase-II and Bhushan ant Acharya was appointed
for the quarter ended 31 March has narrowed significantly. over the corresponding period March, compared to 11.78% in PNB’s performance in man- earnings before interest, taxes, Power & Steel Ltd (BPSL) joint MD and CEO with effect
by around 48% to ₹188.2 crore Zomato’s adjusted revenue of last year to ₹9,499 crore. the year ago. Its net non-per- aging risk-weighted assets was depreciation and amortization expansions. from Friday after Seshagiri
compared to a loss of ₹359.7 from its food delivery vertical, Notably, the bank has made forming asset (NNPA) ratio noteworthy as well, improving at ₹7,939 crore improved sig- Steel sales for the quarter Rao, joint MD and Group CFO,
crore in the year ago following which accounted for a majority significant strides in key finan- also showed improvement, 408 bps to 55.31%. nificantly over ₹4,547 sequen- stood at 6.53 MT, higher 16% completed his term.
a surge in total revenue. of its topline, was at ₹1,530 crore,
The Gurugram-headquar- down from ₹1,565 crore in the
tered company cut its losses by previous quarter, primarily due
46% sequentially from ₹346.6 to the overall slowdown in
crore in the December quarter, India’s food delivery segment,
according to its latest regula- which also brought down its
‘Generative AI can be seen; it’s more cool than traditional AI’
tory filing. Zomato’s operating gross order value to ₹6,559 crore
revenue during the March in Q4 from ₹6680 crore in Q3. Leslie D’Monte People are overawed, yet ally have an RNN or a network were invented to understand out in the sentences. And,
quarter rose 70% “The quarterly leslie.d@livemint.com scared of generative AI and of RNNs which takes input languages better. Images and transformers can figure out
from a year ago to Zomato cut its growth is low due fear the dystopian scenario from all cameras and decides videos are only a by-product of every context as you attach the

A
₹2,056 crore. The losses by 46% to demand slow- s global chief technol- of such tools becoming sen- how the steering wheel needs that. weights to each context. While

‘
company posted sequentially from down witnessed ogy officer of Evalue- tient and taking over the to turn. That’s the output For instance, consider the this is a simple example it is cer-
₹1,211.8 crore in ₹346.6 cr in the in our business serve, Rigvinath Chev- human race. What is your on that net- following sen- tainly a game changer.
revenues in Janu-
Dec qtr, according from late October ala leads all technology teams at position? work. Right tences: A fox But generative AI is find-
ary-March 2022. till the end of Jan- the analytics firm, and serves Yes. That’s what’s happen- now, genera- Generative AI is finding did not cross ing applications across vari-
On Friday, the to its latest uary. As we men- on its executive leadership ing right now. But if you take a tive AI does applications across the street ous domains where every-
company’s shares regulatory filing tioned in our last panel. step back, from a machine- not let you domains such as drug because it was thing is being treated as a
ended the day’s letter, we had In a video conversation from learning standpoint, most do drive a car , for wide; the fox language. As an example, it
trade up 1.72% to started seeing his North Carolina office, not realize that AI is behind the which you discovery, where did not cross is aiding drug discovery, as
₹64.54 apiece on the BSE. green shoots of recovery in the Chevala pro- scenes in many will still have everything is being the street well as finding applications
Zomato said that its business first week of February,“ Deep- vided insights m INTERVIEW applications we to rely on the treated as a language because it was for other domains.
excluding its quick commerce inder Goyal, founder and chief into the trans- interact with. traditional tired; the fox Yes. With machine learning
unit BlinkIt, achieved adjusted executive officer, Zomato, said. formative and But it’s not cool core AI tech- Rigvinath Chevala did not cross we classified patterns automati-
Global chief technology
earnings before interest, taxes, Zomato’s business-to-busi- disruptive potential of genera- since you don’t see it and don’t techniques, like RNNs and niques. officer, Evalueserve the street cally but the accuracy was only
depreciation and amortization ness verticals, Hyperpure and tive AI (artificial intelligence) touch it. CNNs (recurrent neural net- Please pro- because it was about 70%, requiring human
(Ebitda) positive. The firm cal- Blinkit, posted adjusted reve- tools like ChatGPT. He also With generative AI, it is now works and conventional neural vide us with dark. The con- intervention. But with genera-
culates adjusted Ebitda as tradi- nues of ₹478 crore and ₹363 shared his views on how corpo- touchable. And you can see it. networks), were primarily some examples... text of these sentences change tive AI, the understanding of that
tional Ebitda, adding share- crore, respectively. “In food rations could leverage these That is where the coolness fac- sequential—you had to go to Generative AI and trans- in each of these examples—you language, and context is much,
based payment expenses, and delivery we will continue with tools safely to boost productiv- tor comes from, and is the key layers and layers of networks to formers (that help predict the are referring to the street much better, and the output is
subtracting the rent amount the same mindset as we look to ity, and the impact on AI start- difference. There is a technol- get to a clean output. next word or a sentence, and because it’s wide, or the fox as it amazing. In fact, it’s reducing
paid for the period. expand adjusted Ebitda margin ups, besides employment at ogy differentiator, too. Consider how Tesla facili- even a para) were not invented is tired, and you are referring to our effort by close to 40% com-
Profitability was primarily further,” said Goyal. large. Edited excerpts: In the past, our deep learning tates auto driving—they liter- to perform physical stuff. They a time of the day that is not spelt pared to the previous methods.
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 MuMBAI, NEw DELHI, BENGALURU, kOLkATA, CHENNAI, AHMEDABAD, HYDERABAD, CHANDIGARH*, PUNE*
Saturday, May 20, 2023
SENSEX 61,729.68 297.94
₹2,000 notes pulled
ahead of elections
People holding the notes have until 30 Sep to exchange them
Gopika Gopakumar
gopika.g@livemint.com
MUMBAI
T
he Reserve Bank of India
has decided to withdraw
₹2,000 bank notes from
circulation, even as it
remains legal tender. The
withdrawal comes months before
crucial assembly elections in five
states and national polls next year
when cash in circulation surges.
People holding ₹2,000 notes have
until 30 September to deposit or
exchange the notes. The banknotes
can be exchanged for up to ₹20,000
at a time at any bank starting from 23
May 2023. The facility for exchange
will also be available at the 19
regional offices of RBI having issue
departments. RBI has also asked
banks to stop issuing ₹2,000 notes
“with immediate effect”.
RBI’s decision bears some similar-
ities to the 2016 demonetization
event, where the central bank invali-
dated ₹500 and ₹1,000 banknotes,
resulting in widespread chaos. How-
ever, in contrast to the significant
cash removal during the previous
measure, the impact of ₹2,000 notes
is likely limited as it constitutes only
a fraction of the currency in circula-
tion.
With the notes being exchanged,
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VOL. 6 NO. 119 Rs. 10.00 18 PAGES
Central bank dividend to govt Tesla revives import duty
livemint.com rises to ₹87,416 crore uP16 talks with India uP17
NIFTY 18,203.4 73.45 DOLLAR ₹82.665 ₹0.071 EURO ₹89.2903 ₹0.062 OIL $77 $1.19 GOLD ₹60,031 ₹237
Major tax relief:
Forex payments up
CBDT spares
many entities
DON’T MISS
from angel
to ₹7 lakh exempt tax purview
Ranjani Raghavan
Gireesh Chandra Prasad ranjani.raghavan@livemint.com
gireesh.p@livemint.com MUMBAI
NEw DELHI ‘Not proven’ at this stage: SC
T
he Central Board of panel on Adani-Hindenburg
CuRRENCy RECALL
T
he finance ministry on Direct Taxes (CBDT) Allegations of stock price manipulation by
Friday said that forex issued a notification Adani group companies remain unproven “at
The ₹2,000 notes were introduced in November 2016 to urgently meet payments through exempting several foreign and this stage”, according to the expert
the currency requirement committee appointed by the Supreme Court
debit and credit cards up to ₹7 Indian entities from the pur-
Banknotes in circulation, by denomination (% share in total value) to look into alleged regulatory failure by the
100 lakh would be exempted from view of section 56 (2) (VII B),
the liberalized remittance commonly referred to as angel Securities and Exchange Board of India. >P14
₹1,000 ₹2,000 scheme (LRS) and will not tax, a statement released on Fri-
80
attract tax collected at source day said. NCLT rejects insolvency plea of
(TCS) from 1 July, in a major The angel tax applies to the IDBI Bank against Zee Ent
60 relief to Indians making pur- premium paid over the fair
In a significant relief to broadcaster Zee
chases, such as foreign news- market value of shares and is set Entertainment Enterprises, the Mumbai
₹500
paper subscriptions. Indians buying foreign to apply to ‘non-residents’, bench of the National Company Law Tribunal
40 With the latest decision to newspaper subscriptions will according to the Finance Act (NCLT) on Friday rejected an insolvency
retain the ₹7 lakh monetary feel relieved. MINT 2023. The tax authority said petition filed against it by IDBI Bank. The
20
threshold for forex purchases that all government and gov- lender had alleged ₹149 cr loan default. >P14
₹200 from 1 July, individuals mak- the LRS from 1 July 2023. To ernment-related entities such
₹100 and below ing these purchases have avoid any procedural ambigu- as “central banks, sovereign New ordinance on transfer of
0 been spared of the hassles of ity, it has been decided that wealth funds, international or
2009-10 2021-22
such tax at source and subse- any payments by an individ- multilateral organizations or
Group A officers in Delhi
Source: CMIE
quently adjusting it either at ual using their international agencies” will be exempt. It also The Centre on Friday promulgated an
WITHDRAWAL STRATEGY the time of paying quarterly debit or credit cards up to ₹7 exempted entities where a gov- ordinance to create a National Capital Civil
advance tax or at the time of lakh per financial year will be ernment owns more than 75%, Service Authority for transfer of Group-A
THE banknotes can THEy can be RBI’S decision bears officers from the DANICS cadre. It comes a
be exchanged for up exchanged at any some similarities to filing the tax return. excluded from the LRS limits either directly or indirectly. week after the SC gave the control of
to ₹20,000 at a time bank starting 23 May 2016 demonetization The relief comes in the and hence, will not attract any The notification added that services to the Delhi government.
context of an increasing num- TCS,” the ministry said in a banks or entities involved in
ber of Indians making pay- statement. the insurance business would
deposit accretion at banks could the pressure on deposit rate hikes ments in foreign exchange for Existing beneficial TCS also be exempt. Other entities Reliance Retail’s partnership
increase, reducing pressure to hike and could also result in a moderation goods and services from treatment for education and exempted include those regis- with China’s Shein bypasses FDI
deposit rates, which in turn could in short-term interest rates,” said abroad, including purchasing health payments will also tered with the Securities and Chinese online fast-fashion retailer Shein
also moderate the rise in short-term Karthik Srinivasan, senior vice presi- e-books, videos and online continue, the ministry said. Exchange Board of India as cat- won’t require foreign direct investment (FDI)
loan rates. dent of financial sector ratings at coaching, as the consumption “The necessary changes to the egory-I funds, foreign portfolio approval for its partnership with Reliance
“As witnessed during demoneti- ICRA. of these services is on the rise. Rules (Foreign Exchange investors, endowment funds Retail Ventures Ltd, considering that it will
zation, we expect the deposit accre- “A majority of the ₹2,000 denom- “Concerns have been raised Management (Current associated with a university, not hold equity in the new operations,
tion of banks could improve margin- about the applicability of TCS government officials said on Friday. >P16
ally in the near term. This will ease TURN TO PAGE 14 to small transactions under TURN TO PAGE 14 TURN TO PAGE 14
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