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
RBI Governor K.R. Puri changed banking rules for Sanjay Gandhi's Maruti
“The K. R. Puri was the governor. He changed the banking regulation norms so that the Maruti gets the loan.”
Urjit Patel resigned over RBI regulation of public sector banks
“Even he fell out with the government because he wanted the public sector governance norms to be changed so that the RBI can monitor and regulate the public sector banks adequately. So there the differences open and arose. So he also had to quit suddenly.”
Bihar police blinded nine people in a single night in Bhagalpur
“When they did too many, and in one night they blinded nine people, there was a big hue and cry, and then everything came out in the open, and it came to the parliament, and then a committee had to be instituted. To inquire into these blinding cases.”
Sasi: India's core Aadhaar database infrastructure has never had a verified breach
“Till date, we don't have a incident which is verified where the, that Aadhaar database has been breached. So people crying Aadhaar data breached, which is wrong. So that infrastructure was never breached according to my knowledge.”
Sasi: Hackers can technically disable pacemakers remotely to kill individuals
“Today you can actually remotely, you know, destroy someone's pacemaker and kill that person. Technically.”
Shenoy: Kotak Was the First Regulated Entity to Beat RBI in Court
“So, but there Kotak displayed a point where he said the first time a regulated entity went to court and won.”
Shenoy: Yes Bank AT1 Bonds Were Completely Written Down to Zero
“Jab yes bank mein trouble hoa, then 80 bonds were written down to zero. To na apko interest milla na principle.”
Shenoy: Indian Small-Cap Earnings Growth Matched Their 3x Valuation Rise
“In the year of the year, the companies, the market cap, two 51 to 500, versus the multiple today, is the same. Matlab, their valuations have gone up three X. Their earnings have gone up three X. That means from 2019 to now, which is roughly five years, three a…”
Srikantaiah: Chinese dams cannot drain the Brahmaputra because 80% is Indian rainfall
“However, rest assured that if we are able to manage the Brahmaputra, which falls within India, we will not lose much water to the Chinese Dreams of building dams because roughly 80% of the water that flows in the Brahmaputra actually is rainfall which falls on…”
Srikantaiah: Bangalore uses 6.6% of Karnataka's Cauvery water but generates 70% GDP
“However, Bangalore only takes 6.66% of Karnatka's allocation of Cauvery waters, and supports roughly 50% of Karnatka's population in the Cauvery basin. It also generates 70% of the GDP of the state.”
Srikantaiah: Bangalore's water board employs zero hydrogeologists despite 500,000 city borewells
“Just to give you an example, the Bangalore Water Supply and Storage Board does not have a single hydrogeologist. The city has 500,000 bore wells at least. It pumps out six hundred million liters per day. But the institution does not have a single hydrogeologis…”
Srikantaiah: Excavating two five-star hotels completely drained surrounding Bangalore aquifers
“There was a five-star hotel built close to Mount Carmel College and one near Macri Circle. They pumped out groundwater for four to six months, completely emptying all the wells in the surrounding areas. Emptying the aquifer totally.”
Srikantaiah: Triple-cropping rice in Thanjavur sparked the Cauvery water conflict
“We started to grow three crops in areas where we would only grow one crop of rice in the Tanjava belt. That created the Cauvery conflict.”
Rangarajan: India never sold gold in 1991, only pledged it as collateral
“We never sold gold. We only sent out gold To be used as a security akin to which we borrowed. And as soon as we repaid that thing, the gold became ours. There was no idea at any time to sell gold, to only to pledge gold and the pledge of gold borrow money.”
Kumar: ₹1 Crore Tech Leadership Salaries Are Now Normal in India
“And in India, it's one crore become normal, right? Like even a bid manager and at leadership level, it became normal.”
Sachdeva: Delhi High Court ordered ByteDance to stop scraping ShareChat
“We in fact went to Delhi High Court. If you can Google ShareChat versus Hello or ByteDance. In fact, Delhi Highcore told, told them to not do this, not scrape, and in fact, change their app.”
Only the Ambanis Disrupted India's Top Industrial Monopolies Before 1991
“So you go and look at the big industrial houses of India in 1947, when we became independent. And with the one exception of Dambanis, it was the same people in 19 in the early nineties, because effectively once you had become big and you had the wherewithal of…”
Unrestrained Bank Lending From 2006 to 2012 Drove India's NPA Crisis
“So there was a period from 2006 up to about 12, so five, six years, when in response to a slowing growth, the authorities of that time basically opened up the banks and basically said, you go and blindly lend everywhere. And so some part of that capacity creat…”
Kumar: Forward contracts with Indian farmers cannot be enforced
“In India, you can't sign a forward contract with farmer and get it honoured. It is not possible.”
Kumar: Soil organic carbon across Indian farmlands is under 1%
“All the lands in India today, soil organic carbon is less than one percent.”
Kumar: Dairy antibiotic residues drive human antibiotic resistance in India
“We treat animals with antibiotics. Antibiotics come out in milk. That we drink. Then it makes us antibiotic resistant. Fundamental problem. Siddharth Ahluwalia: So this is also contributing to our antibiotic resistance. Shashi Kumar: Yes. One of the biggest co…”
Sharma: Alok Goyal was the only VC at the 2016 UPI launch
“And on, on, on February 11th or February 13th, I forget the date, ah, of 2016, was in, in Taj Vivanthal, ah, the sandbox that was launched. And 321 people came for that. I remember that because, you know, everybody had to register. There was only one VC amongs…”
Sharma: Startups entering UPI after September 2017 effectively do not exist today
“The numbers for UPI started ticking up slowly only in September of 2017. And whoever entered the UPI market after September 2017 does not effectively exist.”
Sharma: 40% of Indian Unicorns Are Domiciled in the US or Singapore
“You know, 40% of our unicorns are technically not Indian at all, right? They are Singaporean or American.”
Lunia: Indian public markets value tech companies higher than private markets
“In India, public markets are giving more premium valuation to many of these companies than private markets”
Karuturi: Indian women informally require male guarantors to secure vehicle loans
“To this day, women can't get vehicle loans, which is Fairly important for companies, right? Capital loans, essentially, unless, I mean, this is an informal rule, but you need to have like your father or your husband, like as a guarantor on the loan”
Shenoy: Indian Stock Trading Volume as a % of GDP Peaked in 2007
“In 2006, if you believe it, as a percentage of GDP, more stocks were traded in 2007 than they are now.”
Pai: India exports more software than Saudi Arabia exports oil
“And we export more software than Saudi Arabia export soil.”
Pai: Bangalore has 2.3M tech workers, surpassing Silicon Valley
“Bangalore has 2.3 million software people and technology people, largest in the world, more than Silicon Valley.”
Mehta: Ather's Bangalore store beats Apple's global revenue per square foot
“Indranagar on many months beats Apple global averages quite, quite comfortably. I think on a regular month, I think it also beats, but on a good month, festive months, I think it's like double that of Apple global average.”
Sinha: Cashfree Captures Up to 50% of New Indian SME Signups
“Today we get more than 45 to 50% of new SME signups, which are happening in there right on cash-free, right? We get more than 30,000 leads on cash-free platform every month, which is a very sizable number. We have clearly won the SME market, right?”
Sinha: Cashfree Holds Up to 60% Share in Payouts and Verification
“I think there are a lot of products which we have pioneered in the industry, likes of PRs, connected banking, verification, and a lot of these markets, we own more than 55, 60% of market share, right?”
Cashfree was India's first payments company to launch bulk payouts
“We were the first payments company in India to launch payouts. No one had payouts back then.”
Sinha: UPI Adoption Triggered a Big Rise in Phishing and Scams
“Risk and fraud is another big area that we see emerging due to the launch of UPI and making digital payments more and more convenient. We also saw a big rise in terms of all the incidents around, you know, scamming people or people losing money because of all …”
Sacheti: Titan's 2018 99-crore primary round carried a punitive valuation
“Over a period of time, Titan then did a secondary in sorry, another primary in 2018. They put 99 crores in the company, and we were really shafted on that valuation. And that cost me a lot at that point.”
Aadit Palicha says Zepto's mature dark stores are fully cash flow positive
“We're sitting in a world where our mature dark stores are fully loaded, you know, turning fully loaded cashflow positive without exaggeration. And I know there's a lot of, you know, creativity in what's above and below, you know, those numbers, you know, can I…”
Zepto dark stores achieve profitability faster than traditional Indian supermarkets
“If you look at Nielsen's data, the average time it takes for a DMART, Reliance Fresh, more retail, Spencer's retail, et cetera, all, I mean, all companies that we have a lot of respect for, take some 18 to 24 months to turn a new supermarket profitable. We're …”
Goyal: Profitability has replaced growth as primary driver of US SaaS multiples
“The biggest driver of multiples today is whether you're profitable or you're not profitable, right? Sentiment has changed.”
Khurma: Many EdTechs spend ₹1L to acquire customers worth a fraction
“I know of many cases where the cost of acquiring a customer, when you factor in all the real costs, is upward of a lakh, and the LTV is like one fourth of that, or like one third of that, right? So, these are businesses where just money is being sunk in, and n…”
Kaniel: Asian mobile device lifetime value matched or exceeded the US
“A couple of years ago, we've done a research about lifetime value per device, and we found that an average device in Asia actually have more lifetime Kind of lifetime value per device in Asia than in the U S or equal.”
Quick commerce took market share from neighborhood kiranas, not BigBasket
“When these 10 minute, 20 minute things came, lot of our customers went there to buy stuff, which they used to go to Kirana and buy. So none of the big basket business went there.”
India Has More Smartphone Owners Than Active Digital Payment Users
“India is actually, if you think about it, it's the only country in the world where, ah, you know, more people have smartphones today than they are actively doing payments or digital transactions or you know, or even actively using bank accounts or have credit …”
Pitti: EaseMyTrip stayed profitable without convenience fees while rivals lost money
“Our unit economics is so strong that even, even pandemic could not you know, we are so resilient that even pandemic could not make us a loss making company. That, that I think is the biggest mode, and because we are so, so robust, we are so capital efficient, …”
Singhal: FTX became global number two crypto exchange through innovation
“Still FTX became the number two player in the world you know because of their innovation, because of what they brought to the table.”
Jain: Recruitment industry has completely failed to adopt modern ad tech
“That technology is so advanced, and it's, in a simplistic way, it's ad tech. It's what Google does. It's what Amazon does at the core of it. That technology has not been implemented or used in any shape or form in our industry.”
Mammography fails for women under 45 due to dense breast tissue
“It does not work on women under 45 years of age because what we call as dense press, you know, The kind of fibroglandial tissue that many of the men who are like about what if I also have this and also younger women definitely have this. So, so the whole breas…”