Namaste, Sat Sri Akaal, and Salaam. 🫡

Happy Friday, folks. 🙏

Today we’re diving into -
- Mercedes’ plan to go bijlee-bijlee with the Desi market,
- Dr. Agarwal’s $80 million push to give India vision,
- And Modi’s $12 billion “shuffling” of funds.

Our read time today is 4 minutes and 57 seconds - faster than Bumrah gets injured before important matches. 🔥

Let's dive in. 👇

Market Vibe Check

Mercedes wants to supercharge India with EVs. ⚡

TLDR -
- Mercedes is planning to sell 1 in 4 cars as electric by 2025.
- They are adding 4 new EV models in the next 12-18 months.
- EVs are only gonna be successful if India has a network to take care of them.

No one makes cars like the Germans do.

And Mercedes is betting that the best of their electric beasts will flourish in India.

Merc is planning production for the next 5 years as they do annually - but one thing stands out this time.

They’re predicting that 1 in 4 Mercs sold in India by 2025 will be an EV.

Current levels are at 3-4%, which they want to boost by adding 4 new models in the next 1.5 years.

As usual the devil is in the details.

India’s supercharger grid is currently very dry.

Which is why people who drive electric have chargers installed at home + office, since there are virtually ZERO charging stations throughout the city.

EVs are a 1% product and Mercedes EVs are definitely not mass-market, which means that the infrastructure won’t pop up as quickly.

But hey… something is a whole lot better than nothing.

German car + Punjabi music + Indian night = unbeatable…

Dr. Agarwal snags $80 million to fix India’s eyesight. 👀

TLDR -
- Dr. Agarwal raised $80mn from TPG and Temasek.
- Money is gonna be thrown toward RAPID expansion - 1 store/5 days until 2025.
- TPG and Temasek have actually also co-invested in India’s largest actual hospital chain, Manipal Health.

Dr. Agarwal isn’t your average Baniya.

He runs India’s largest eye hospital chain.

The company is called Dr. Agarwal’s, and it is a cash flow machine which just announced a $80mn cash infusion from TPG and Temasek.

Funds are gonna be splashed very liberally on opening up more locations.

Doctor currently has 150 stores but wants to open over 330 by 2025.

Comes down to almost one new hospital every 5 days.

But the main reason that the money is flowing so freely?

Indian healthcare is an EVERGREEN market.

Large chunks of India’s middle class are understanding the importance of getting your eyes checked up (and not only your blood pressure).

So with this increasing “affluence”, the eyecare market is growing at 2X the pace of normal hospital businesses.

Ab saaf dikh raha hai… 🤓

BJP wants to “free up” $12bn for handouts. 😅

TLDR -
- Modi is thinking about spending 1L Cr INR to ease inflation.
- Most of this will be funded by cutting budgets of ministries.
- Might also be some vote-farming before elections.

BJP is considering a plan to splash 1 lakh crore INR on subsidies for the poor.

This is gonna be funded by -
- cutting underutilized budgets of ministries
- lowering taxes on local gas sales
- easing import tariffs on oil and wheat

All of this deliberation comes after the RBI announced India’s highest inflation print since COVID.

Inflation is essentially a regressive tax - taking more from the bottom of the pyramid and less from the top.

The bottom of the pyramid is a lot larger than the top though, which means that it’s in ruling party’s favour to keep them happy.

Elections are around the corner… but we don’t talk about that. 😉

In other news… ☕

Chinese Yuan falls to lowest level since 2007 (BBG)

Citadel gets ready to finance Yellow’s $150mn bankruptcy loan (FT)

Walmart plays up their earnings because of heavy online growth (TC)

Ralph Lauren tries joining the metaverse party… 3 years late 🤦(BBG)

Vietnamese electric carmaker surges past Ford & GM after SPAC offering (FT)

And that’s the tea the chai for today.

Thanks for reading, and we hope you enjoyed it. Have a mauj-masti filled day ahead.

Lots of ❤️,

Team Cutting Chai 😤