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 643 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 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
Virwani: Indian REITs will see higher appreciation than US REITs
“India will see higher appreciation, I would say, than foreign REITs, or like, you know, the US REITs and things like that, so.”
Virwani: India is Blackstone's most profitable market outside the US
“India has been very, very successful for them. I think it's been their most profitable market outside of the US.”
Shankar: India office leasing will probably hit 70M sq ft in 2024
“India is going to have its probably most successful year of office leasing. I think just in the first half of this year, some thirty four million square feet of office space has been transacted. And that's half the year. Second half of the year is usually more…”
Shankar: GCCs account for 28% to 30% of Indian office leasing
“The reason why GCCs keep coming up is because from the commercial office take-up, they're taking up almost 28 to 30% of your office space. I think now, co-working was at 25, 26%. It's come down to 21%. IT has actually come down to maybe 10 to 15% from new spac…”
Nilekani: Indian government asked for unique ID, not digital ID
“No, the government asked me to build a unique ID. There was no digital in it. I made it digital.”
Nilekani: Digital rails compressed 46 years of banking penetration into nine
“So on the normal GDP, if you had looked at it, it'll take in 46 years to get to the level of banking penetration that we did in nine years, because you accelerated with digital technology.”
Kamath: Multiplex Occupancy Rates Are Lower Than Five Years Ago
“Like, there's a couple of companies I'm a small part of, and let's say occupancy rates in multiplexes are lower than where they were five years ago. It's harder for a multiplex to make money.”
Shenoy: Diageo's Celebration Rum now significantly outsells Old Monk
“I think Celebration Ram, which is of DI Joe, now outsells Old Monk quite a bit.”
Khaitan: Flavored Vodka Accounts for 80% of India's Vodka Market
“In vodka, 80% of the market now has become flavored vodka.”
Suri: Listing a single whiskey SKU in Delhi costs ₹25 lakh
“Whiskey is 25 lakh rupees per SKU in Delhi to get your product listed.”
Khaitan: Magic Moments accounts for 60% of India's vodka sales
“Today we are proud that magic is the seventh largest vodka in the world. And in India, out of all the vodkas, starting from a regular to a Grey Goose or a Kaufman, 60% of any vodka sold is magic.”
Mittersain: A 19-year-old's Roblox game generates $60M in annual revenue
“I just did a Zoom call recently with a 19 year old kid who has a game called Blocks Roots. And it makes something like sixty million dollars a year or something. In revenue.”
Kamath: Sovereign credit rating methodologies rely mostly on subjective, perception-based parameters
“Six are quantitative in nature, like GDP rate, fiscal deficit, inflation, past track record of servicing debt. The other 10 or 11 parameters are arbitrary in nature. It's more coming around perception and stuff like that.”
Agarwal: Indian companies cannot achieve an A credit rating due to sovereign caps
“So if you are an Indian corporation, you may be like any big company, you don't get a rating because your sovereign itself is not rated that.”
Alagh: Johnson & Johnson Faced US Boycotts Over Cancer-Causing Talc
“And because I had lived in New York, I knew back in New York, there was this whole movement around J&J going on where the talc had some cancer causing ingredients in them and they were being taken off the shelves.”
Alagh: Harmful baby skincare ingredients banned abroad were widely used in India
“Those ingredients were banned in a few countries to be used on a baby's skin, which were being widely used in India.”
Narain: US emission reductions rely on switching from coal to shale gas
“The U.S. Has gone from coal, the use of coal, to the use of shale gas, ok? Now, most of its energy today comes from shale gas.”
Distribution Inefficiencies Inflate Indian Power Tariffs From Two to Eleven Rupees
“By the time it gets applied to a customer, it's about seven to 11 rupees. So the first question that we have is the inefficiencies in the system that take the supply from the one or two rupees to the 11 rupees.”
India Averages One Extreme Weather Event Per Day According to Data
“So we do something called extreme weather database. And we put together all the extreme weather events as defined by IMD and then produce a report at the end of each year. It's one extreme weather event a day, as defined by IMD.”
Dubash: Solar power costs 2 rupees per unit, 4 with storage
“So for solar, the lowest you can get these days is around two rupees. Right. Now it gets complicated because they're starting to say, well, what about solar and storage? So solar and storage ends up being around four rupees, but it's not enough storage to come…”
Current Global Climate Policies Put Earth on Track for 2.6°C Warming
“Right now we're on track for somewhere around 2.6.”
Narain: Michelin and Danone claim credits through tree-planting offsets
“So if you look at the offset programs, if you look at the analysis we did, so Michelin Danone, a lot of the companies that are claiming carbon credits are claiming it on the basis of the trees that they have bought the offsets from, the carbon credits from.”
Gogri: Gen-IV Small Modular Reactors Should Come Online by 2030
“Ok, so the point is that my hope is around this generation four reactors, which, again, there is a hope element to that, but they should be getting online by the end of this decade, and they are more smaller than the big power plant.”
Ozone-Depleting Chemical Substitutes Turned Out to Have Massive Global Warming Potential
“Yes, the ozone layer has repaired itself to a large extent, but the technology, the chemical which has come after all these variations is now being understood to have major impact on climate change.”
IPCC 1.5°C Climate Models Mathematically Require Unproven Carbon Dioxide Removal Tech
“One, when the IPCC runs these models, and we say politically we want to try and keep to a world of 1.5 warming, the models don't close. You can't do it without a whole bunch of assumptions around carbon dioxide removal.”
Tarun Mehta: Ather will reach 1,000 touchpoints within 2.5 years
“We'll go from 200 touch points to a thousand touch points in the next two and a half years. At which point you've crossed oil and field scale already.”
Mehta: Giant battery cell makers operate at thin 4-6% PAT margins
“Most cell manufacturing companies, the really enormous ones, like LG Chem, Panasonic, all these guys, even in the best times that they made cells and sold cells, had like crazy ability to sell price at any point. They can sell at any price, like last year basi…”
Mehta: Electric scooters emit 40% less than petrol scooters on current grid
“In scooters at least, our math was, it is. It is 40% less emission than a petrol scooter. You're at least reducing emission to 40%. Even if the grid does not become greener at all.”
Maini: Indian government removed subsidies and doubled EV taxes before Reva launch
“One month after we launched, the government pulled the plug on subsidies, and actually one month before we launched, and doubled the taxation on electric vehicles... And reduced taxes on petrol vehicles.”
50% of electric trucks in China used swappable batteries in 2023
“This year, 50% of all electric trucks in China were with swappable batteries, right? That target was supposed to be achieved in 27.”
EV battery cell production in India will begin within 24 months
“I think in the next 24 months, cells will start being produced in India, right? And maybe in 48 months, we'll have a very small chunk.”
Tarun Mehta: Ather operates India's largest two-wheeler fast-charging network
“Actually in two wheelers, it's the largest fast charging network in the country.”
Maini: India's 18% battery GST versus 5% EV GST penalizes EV manufacturers
“Electric vehicles at five percent GST, but a battery pack, right? Batteries are at 18%, right? So it's also hard, A, for a lot of companies only making electric vehicles where they'll have an inverted duty structure, because the input will over time be more th…”
Kamath: Indian influencer brand spend is ₹1,500–2,000 crore, growing 30–40%
“I think the amount of money brands are spending on purely social media influencers, because you can extrapolate and everybody's an influencer, right? If your profession is social media influencer, like you, for example, I would assume that number is between 15…”
Bhat: YouTube will natively integrate AI lip-synced audio dubbing
“It's going to get built in on YouTube, Nikhil. There's going to be a button where you can select a language and your mouth will move in that language. It's going to come into YouTube. It's going to take forever because YouTube is a slightly slower moving beast…”
Kalra: 90% of Restaurants Fail Within a Year Due to Undercapitalization
“90% around that of restaurants failed within the first year and around 96% within 18 months. And the biggest reason you won't believe is not necessarily lack of passion or getting into it for glamorous reasons. It's undercapitalization.”
Kalra: Swiggy and Zomato Do Not Hire Employees From Each Other
“They don't even hire from each other, from what I know.”
Biyani: India's top 120 million people account for 70% of FMCG consumption
“Another research which we found out was the total package good consumption in India, FMCG package good in value terms, is 70% of excess is by this India one.”
Narayanan: Private brands grew to 30% of sales, driving Myntra's profitability
“And the private brand business of Myntra at the same time also went from seven, eight percent to call it almost 30%, which is what drove profitability. So we were among the most profitable pieces of the Flipkart ecosystem, not amongst, we were the most profita…”
Kamath: Amazon India grew just 5% in 2023 while Flipkart grew 7-8%
“Amazon India grew by just about five percent this year. Flipkart seven, eight percent based on higher end electronics and premiumization, which seems to be growing.”
Kamath: Bollywood film production is currently net-unprofitable overall
“If a thousand rupees is going into making Bollywood movies, the net outcome is sub thousand rupees. Today.”
Palicha: Zepto reached over 5,000 crore INR sales in 24 months
“And yeah, from July, 21 to today, like about 24 months, went from about zero to like today north of 5000 crores in sales.”
Prashanth Prakash: Only two Indian startups raised $50M+ external rounds in 2023
“From new externally led rounds, there's been two this year. So it's a tough market.”
Sivanandan: 80 to 90 million Indians have paid for streaming subscriptions
“The size of the number of people who've, ah, who've paid subscription at least once, at any given point in time, is anywhere between 80 to ninety million people.”