Have you heard of Neem Karoli Baba? If so, it most likely has something to do with Steve Jobs, whose trip to India in 1974 was prompted in part by a book he read from one of the mystic saint’s American devotees. Although Jobs was unable to meet Baba during his trip – Baba had died the year before – he made the saint known in the counterculture movement on the American West Coast in the 1970s.
Young Jobs himself might have passed for a mystic. A college dropout who was not averse to the weed haze, he stood out in the corporate setups he joined, first as a shabby young man who bathed only occasionally and moved around barefoot, and then as a visionary who he could orchestrate the conceptualization, design, and manufacturing of market-defining products.
But enough of work. This week was about Tim Cook.
Eat!
Story of the Week: Cook’s India Recipe
Tim Cook, who took over as CEO of Apple Inc. in 2011, is nowhere near Steve Jobs. We will avoid using “apples and oranges” because we already said it in the story about Cook savoring India. But that’s an apt analogy.
Cook is known to wake up at five every morning and the first thing he does is read his emails, including numerous unsolicited ones. (Cook does not hide her email address, although some believe that tcook@apple.com is not her personal email account, and emails sent to her may be read first by her team.) . Jobs, drawing on his famous biography of Walter Isaacson and all the stories going around, was far less interested in what others had to say.
Yet in his studied, understated, and deliberate way, Cook is on his own expedition to India, bringing Apple closer to the country than ever before. And it’s not just about the Apple stores he opened in the country.
Cook, unusual for a big corporate boss, was here all week and his recipe for connecting with Indians included all the essential ingredients: movies, IPL, badminton, vada pav and dozens of namastes, plus knowing the ones that matter. Was all business.
Cook has been at it for a while, and movies and cricket have been part of his plans in India, as this story from 2016 by Nivedita Mookerji (@nivmook) noted.
This week, among the hubbub, there has also been skepticism. “Of course he would paint a great future for India; he has things to sell here,” some said. Shivani, who runs our technology and IT coverage, said he met many Apple devotees during his reporting. Those are already Apple people. Is Apple doing enough to find new fans who would pay (more than necessary) for its products?
Cook’s visit was a milestone in another sense. Madhuri Dixit Nene, who lit up Hindi movie screens in the 1990s, graced our cover on Tuesday.
In other news…
IT company stocks have been weighing on market indices. The liquidation has resulted in a sharp drop in sector weighting in the Nifty50 index, falling to a five-year low. The combined market capitalization of the big five (TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL Tech and Tech Mahindra) is down 8.2% since the start of 2023 compared to a 2.7% drop in the Nifty50 index.
We’re starting a new column, by Ajay Chhibber, Senior Visiting Professor at ICRIER and Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the George Washington University Institute for International Economic Policy. In the first of it, Chhibber says delegate more power to local governments it is crucial to make India an advanced economy by 2047.
Tech that: Word from the world of technology and start-ups
Indian startups that raised capital from domestic investors at a “excessive premium” between the evaluation years 2018-19 and 2020-21 they have been under the scanner of the income tax department, which has asked them to justify the premium.
Look at it: The best of our hot audiovisual service
Fast-trading platform Blinkit, now owned by Zomato, dealt with a strike by its delivery people, who were chanting against a cut in their profits. Are Blinkit’s problems raising questions about its business model? get the answer here.
What is Suveen obsessed with these days?
Friday morning was difficult in weekend bites familiar. The lady began the day with the lament: “My only claim to fame is lost.” Elon Musk had removed the blue check mark from her.
He bites I was very comforted to notice that @bsindia had a checkmark, even though it was a new, golden one. But the lady still had to be sure that all was not lost. So this is what we found.
Rofl Gandhi 2.0 (@RoflGandhi_), an account that describes itself as “Parody. Not Rahul Gandhi,” had its blue checkmark intact. Rahul Gandhi’s was gone. To Rofl’s credit, they flagged this on Twitter with a groan of their own: “what kind of world are you living in bro (what kind of world are you creating)”. The lament was directed at @elonmusk.
what kind of world are you living in bro @Elon Musk ???? pic.twitter.com/ntb3TKsqSi— Rofl Gandhi 2.0 ???? (@RoflGandhi_) April 21, 2023
By the way, on Friday, Sachin Tendulkar, who lost his blue check mark, made his #AskSachin debut on Twitter. Inevitably, a user asked the cricket legend how to be sure it was Tendulkar answering the questions, since his account was no longer verified. In response, Tendulkar posted a photo of himself, unshaven and looking a bit faded, saying: “From now on this is my blue tick check.”
As of now, this is my blue tick verification! ???? https://t.co/BSk5U0zKkp pic.twitter.com/OEqBTM1YL2
—Sachin Tendulkar (@sachin_rt) April 21, 2023
Trendulkar did not have to do such a thing. The blue check mark next to @Trendulkar was intact.
Let’s see if Sachin’s Twitter status changes by his 50th birthday on Monday.
Amitabh Bachchan, who has been meticulously numbering his tweets since joining the platform, seemed to revert to his inner Vijay, the simpleton Don, to deal with the loss of his blue check mark.
T 4623 – A twitter brother! You are listening? Now we have also filled the money… so that blue lotus ✔️ is there, right, put it back brother, so people know that it’s us – Amitabh Bachchan .. with folded hands Here we are Now, god???? — Amitabh Bachchan (@SrBachchan) April 21, 2023
Bachchan, loosely translated, said, “Listen, buddy! I’ve paid the verification fee. Now please reset my blue check mark so people know it’s me. I say this with folded hands, do you want me to touch your feet too?”
Kaushik Basu, former chief economic adviser at India’s Finance Ministry and former chief economist at the World Bank, offered a reason to make the lamenters think again. “It’s embarrassing to have a blue tick now because it’s a sign you paid for it,” he tweeted.
It’s embarrassing to have a blue tick now because it’s a sign that you paid for it.
— Kaushik Basu (@kaushikcbasu) April 21, 2023
Basu, who now teaches at Cornell University in the United States, also offered a measure of the blue checkmark: “Here’s the economics of Twitter’s blue checkmarks in one tweet: Cornell titles are very valuable. The “People are willing to pay for them. If Cornell decides that it will now sell all of its securities for one price, the market price of Cornell’s security will rapidly drop to zero.”
The “is” in that tweet is how Basu put it; please don’t blame them bites for it.
So those of you Bites readers who have lost your blue checkmarks, how are you dealing with it? Feel free to write about it, crying or smiling, to suveen.sinha@bsmail.in.
(Suveen Sinha is Senior Content Editor at Business Standard)
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