The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 2,620 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 7 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Sharma: Around 50 of India's 120 unicorns are domiciled abroad
“Probably 50 of our 120 unicorns are technically not Indian, right?”
Sharma: India Lacks An Aligned National Game Plan For AI
“Now your question is, do we have a game plan like that for AI, right?
And is it understood by all the three stakeholders?
And the short answer is not yet.
We don't have a game plan.
We know some elements of the game plan but we don't
We know those elements are…”
Digi Yatra purges travel data immediately after passengers clear the airport
“The moment you go through the airport, and your PNR has been used, we purge it. So, there's no permanent record of your travel to enable privacy.”
Round-the-clock solar power now costs less than coal in many cases
“Today, the cost of round-the-clock solar is actually lower than the cost of coal in many cases, particularly in India.”
Narayana: Philippines call center talent is saturated despite double-digit industry growth
“Today, Philippines has reached its saturation point. There's not many more English speakers available in the country who can support this industry, and this industry is still growing double digits even today, right?”
Noel Tata Rejected BigBasket, Claiming Nobody Buys Groceries Online
“We went and met Noel Tata at that time. Trent. So for this, he said, listen, people will buy books and all the stuff, grocery, nobody's going to buy online. That is, those are his words. So he rejected investing in our business because we are looking for this.…”
Doubtnut Declined a $150M Byju's Offer Before Selling for $10M
“And obviously you've heard all the stories about how they were offered one, fifty million by uses and acquisition. And finally they got sold for ten million and all that stuff”
Balasubramaniam: India Discovered Algebra, Calculus, Trigonometry, and the Binary System
“A nation which discovered algebra, calculus, trigonometry, binary system, to metallurgy, to chemistry, cannot be a nation of fools, right?”
Garg: Under 5% of Indian Farmers Earn 60K-70K Rupees Per Hectare
“60 to 70,000 per hectare is my challenge. Hardly five percent of the farmers in India will be earning by doing everything in the agriculture.”
Garg: India's industrial growth stayed below 4% under Modi 2.0
“In Modi, 2.2, the industrial growth has been less than four percent for five years.”
Garg: Less than 5% of PLI manufacturing incentives disbursed after four years
“So as a result, despite four, four years of the PLI, the PL, the foreign PLIs on in total dispersed only about less than five percent of the incentives in, in this period.”
India's 1991 Economic Reforms Were Not Dictated by the IMF
“And you know, one of the biggest fallacies Is that these changes were made because of the IMF. This is totally false. It is true that the IMF would have said reduce the fiscal deficit, but everybody was saying reduce the fiscal deficit. The IMF would have insi…”
Indian Government Decriminalized Only 100 of 5,000 Recommended Business Penalties
“Finally, they did recommend to the central government that at least 5000 need not be a criminal penalty, and so a lot of work was done. But in the end, only 100 were removed.”
Sanyal: Punjab's GDP share and relative income have steadily declined since 1970s
“It does well in agriculture it's per capita income by 1907 early seventies is well above the national average, and then it stagnates. And this happens to such an extent that today Punjab's per capita income is just barely above the national average and its sha…”
Sanyal: Odisha's per capita income is now higher than West Bengal's
“Odisha on the other hand, which was always the poor cousin, is now actually has a per capita income higher than a West Bengal.”
Sikri: Indian defenses in Jammu weakened after troops redeployed to Ladakh
“But our defenses have become weaker in the Jammu region. Partly because we have had to move some of our troops from there to the Ladakh Front after 2020.”
Sikri: India buys discounted Russian oil, refines it, and exports to Europe
“We have managed to get a cheap oil from Russia because they couldn't sell it in the global market. So we have been buying the oil, refining it, and selling it to Europe at a profit.”
Subramanian: India's abject poverty fell from 12.2% to 2.2% over a decade
“Poverty, for instance, which is, let's say very, very abject poverty, you know, that has decreased from 12.2% in 2012 to 2.2% in, you know, in, in in, in 2022, 22.”
Intermediaries capture 90% of value from Indian farmers under APMC rules
“Because of this phenomenon of hundred rupees of value added, let's say in, you know, in farm produce, 90 rupees is cornered by the intermediary. The farmer, small farmer gets only 10 rupees.”
Singhal: Corruption adds at least 25% to business costs in some states
“From their experience they were saying that cost of doing business so if you are in certain states, corruption is at least 25% of your cost, total cost, and you now have to live with it.”
Singhal: Politicians across all parties control most Indian cooperative banks
“If you see most cooperative banks are controlled by politicians today, and I meant all parties, so not just one party, but all parties want to control these banks.”
Parekh: China's delivery costs are 3x India's, making quick commerce unviable
“And the third factor which contributed is that we have the lowest manpower cost anywhere in the world.
Even China is three X more expensive, right?
In terms of cost per delivery, which is why quick commerce doesn't work even in China, because cost per delivery…”
Ferrari: Bending Spoons generates profits in the hundreds of millions
“Yeah, we don't disclose that, but in the hundreds of millions.”
Ferrari: Bending Spoons Was the Highest Bidder on Every Acquisition Offer Made
“What I can say is that to my knowledge, every single time we have bid, we've made an offer. We've either acquired the business or the owner chose not to sell it. That's to say we have historically being by far to my knowledge, the best bidder.”
Ferrari: Remini is second most used genAI app globally behind ChatGPT
“Remini is far and away the number one product for AI-based image editing, image generation in the world. It's to my knowledge, the second most used generative AI product in the world. It has over a hundred million it's only second to chat GPT as far as I can t…”
Krishna: India's PLI manufacturing incentives are not linked to job creation
“Current, the way it stands today, it has nothing to do with job creation, right? So the incentive, somebody can come set up something and like they'll get those incentives, but it's not connected to how many jobs they created.”
Krishna: Indian government and PSUs are the biggest non-payers of MSMEs
“Government is the biggest part is on one side of it where many PSUs and governments have not paid MSMEs.”
Kumar: 40% of Indian Teens Cannot Do Second-Grade Math or Reading
“Recently, the ACER report, which came out five months back, showed that the age group of 14 to 18. This is different from that earlier part. But age group of 14 to 18, 40% cannot do second class reading, writing, and maths.”
Kumar: 280 Million Indians Lack Proper Employment
“So in our report, we estimated that these four kinds of unemployment mean two eighty million Indian don't have a proper job. Only three twenty million Indians have a proper job out of six hundred million.”
Kumar: Indian Real Wages Stagnated While Corporate Profits Rose
“So even though wages have risen, but in the last 10 years, the real wages have not risen because there's been inflation also. So you have on the one hand, wages not rising. On the other hand, the corporate sector profits and the organized sector profits, they …”
Kumar: 95% of India's GST Revenue Comes From Organized Sector
“That will not reduce your tax collection because 95% of the tax is collected from the organized sector. Only five percent is collected from others. And Jaitley famously said five percent units pay 95% of the tax. 95% pay only five percent of the tax.”
Kumar: 10% to 12% of India's High-Net-Worth Individuals Left
“Between 2014 and 2019 23,000 left the country. In 2019 another seven and a half thousand left. We don't have the data in between, but in 2022 it was reported another 7000 left the country. So out of the two lakh 50,000 high net worth individuals, 10 12% are le…”
Nadhani: Indian SaaS engineering offers only ~1.5x cost leverage over US
“R and D you have 1.5 X leverage India to us engineers. It's not massive. Like let's say not an SF engineer, but somewhere in between engineer, like a Midwest or something.”
Bijapur: Billboard ads delivered better ROI than targeted digital performance marketing
“In fact, our ROI for the limited experiment that we did was better than targeted digital marketing or targeted performance marketing that we did online.”
Siddhartha: Modi's 10-year administration gave India its first consistent government
“India had never had the good fortune of consistent governments throughout its history. You know, the governments have come and gone only the last 10 years with, you know, the current Prime Minister Modi's government has been a stable government.”
BYD Outgrew Tesla Because China Systematically Prioritized Domestic Firms, Says Kewalramani
“Although Tesla has a massive factory in Shanghai, but the approach is that we will support our companies, and that's why BYD today is much, much bigger than Tesla.”
China Grew Fastest Through Decentralized Regional Experimentation, Argues Kewalramani
“China grew at its best when it allowed people to experiment. So there was no one China model. There were multiple China models. Every province, every city could experiment under the broad goal that we need to expand GDP growth. And the best outcomes were then …”
Bagri: Roughly 40% of all personal loans in India fund travel
“So the number of personal loans which are taken for travel is almost 40% if I'm not wrong.”
Garg: Only a handful of Indian tech companies exceed $30M–$40M ARR
“A lot of Indian companies are, have started to reach A million to million type of ARRs, but have not a lot of companies beyond a few that you can count on your hands are beyond the 30, forty million ARR today.”
SaaS Requires $125M to Hit $100M ARR Versus $250M for Fintech
“See on an average, a SaaS company takes hundred twenty-five million dollars to touch a hundred million. A fintech company probably takes two fifty million dollars, right? So that way SaaS is extremely capital intensive and B to B marketplace will take probably…”
Sri Batchu: Angel investing consistently underperforms index funds
“It's really important to know that it's a consistently underperforming asset class. Like you will make less money doing angel investing than putting your money in an index fund or almost any other kind of equity investment by and large.”
Ganesh: Multinational pharma in India has completely eliminated doctor kickbacks
“Definitely the multinational pharma companies are completely away from any kind of kickbacks to doctors. That is completely stopped, even to the extent that you can't even pay a doctor to go To attend one of your training sessions in a different city or a diff…”
US VCs have called Atomicwork the best Indian SaaS startup ever
“The large VCs in the US have said that this is the best ever SaaS company that has come out of India.”
Sethi: Tribe Capital holds the world's largest private company database
“And so we have the world's largest repository of private data of private companies. More than anyone else in the world because we've been doing it for 10 years.”
Sethi: Tribe Capital is on track for net 5X returns on all funds
“We have a goal of hitting a net five X return profile for all of our funds over a 10 year period. And we've always been on track for them. That's kind of our historical record.”
Kotasthane: India's Union Government Workforce Is Half the Size of America's
“If you normalize India's government to U S population to India, Indian federal union government is one half that of the U S right.”
Kotasthane: 1950s Bombay Alcohol Prohibition Created the Mumbai Mafia
“The only way you will get access to it is someone has to do this in an illegal way. And that's how the origin of a lot of the underworld mafia came into being.”
Kotasthane: Punjab's Subsoil Water Act Caused Concentrated Burning and Delhi's Smog
“So once that happened, once you start doing that if you start Sowing your crop in June, July by when the harvesting season comes, that is also delayed and you have very little time between the harvesting season and the next cropping season. So once you have a …”