The audio edition of The Ken’s Make India Competitive Again newsletter, spearheaded by Seetharaman G. Every Wednesday, our editors and reporters read the latest edition and chronicle what India is doing, will do, and should do—to not just survive but thrive in the chaos unleashed by Donald Trump.

Let’s think back to what happened a little more than a week ago: On 30 August, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart, Shigeru Ishiba, boarded Japan’s fastest bullet train, the Hayabusa, and cruised toward Miyagi prefecture at 320 km/h. They were heading to a facility of semiconductor equipment giant Tokyo Electron Limited, or TEL, in Sendai, to spotlight India and Japan’s collaboration in the semiconductor sector.

Japan is a major player in chipmaking, and it’s a model for the way disruption-free operations are crucial for any nation that is a meaningful part of the semiconductor space. This is a particularly important takeaway for India, especially given how PM Modi said last week that he expects to eventually see a “full stack” semiconductor ecosystem in the country.

There are plenty of risks to mitigate—the dependence on Taiwan, erratic diplomatic moves by US President Donald Trump, and China’s weaponisation of its dominance in supply chains, to name a few. 

All of this means India needs rock-solid supply chain links for critical equipment and materials if it wants to become a reliable chip producer. 

The Ken contributor Ankit Tiwari dives into the details in this week’s edition of Make India Competitive Again, as read by Brady Ng.

Read this edition as a newsletter: https://the-ken.com/newsletter/make-india-competitive-again/india-has-a-full-stack-semicon-dream-but-only-half-the-links-it-needs-to-crack-it/

India’s MSMEs operate in informal frameworks that have barely evolved over the past two decades. The result is that small businesses have largely the same struggles as they did before, whether it’s the absence of adequate credit, difficulties in entering new markets, or payment delays.

Since MSMEs are the second-largest employer in India, solving these problems represents a significant opportunity.

After all, opportunity has already come knocking. Take for example the shift of manufacturing out of China. India should be a natural destination, but the smaller manufacturers in the country simply were not prepared or equipped with the competencies that major clients demand from their vendors.

There are startups in India taking steps to help small manufacturing businesses develop “full-stack factory solutions”.
The Ken reporter Pranathi DVLS explores this space in this edition of Make India Competitive Again, as read by Rahel Philipose.

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It’s been a month since India’s nationwide shift to E20 petrol—20% ethanol-blended petrol. Vehicle owners have come forward to complain about falling mileage, damage to their vehicles, voided warranties, and the absence of insurance coverage.

The change has sparked outrage, and nothing is being done to placate the country’s many millions of angry drivers.

India’s move to E20 fuel took place much faster than originally planned. This pace may have been inspired by a previous success, when the government had to address worsening air pollution in the 2010s. 

At the time, regulators were able to skip a step to implement more stringent vehicle emissions standards. Even though there was some opposition from automakers, the change was largely unchallenged, and the public was onboard.

The context is different this time around, and the confidence exuded by the government is misplaced. 

The Ken’s Suprita Anupam explains in this edition of Make India Competitive Again, as read by Brady Ng.

Read this edition as a newsletter: https://the-ken.com/newsletter/make-india-competitive-again/from-bs6-to-e20-india-learnt-the-wrong-lessons-heres-how-to-course-correct/

Dialysis is a tough business, and not because of any serious lack of demand. Over 280,000 patients were undergoing regular dialysis in 2024, a number that’s projected to go up to 520,000 by 2029. Add in less frequent or one-time treatments, and the number of patients who need the procedure every year breaches one million. 

It is the economics that is the tricky bit. High procurement costs, tricky consumable-stock management, and very low margins—in fact, nowhere on the planet can one run a small dialysis business sustainably. 

And India, with the lowest dialysis price point in the world, is the toughest market to crack. 

Which perhaps explains why IPO-bound kidneycare chain Nephroplus’ founder Vikram Vuppala built the kidneycare chain the way he did. It is already India’s—and Asia’s—largest dialysis service provider. And it is expanding, both inside and outside the country’s borders, for which it wants to put the Rs 353 crore it plans to raise from its IPO to good use. 

In this edition of Make India Competitive Again, The Ken’s Sudeshna Ray explains how testing itself in a market like India, and building expertise in a “full-stack” model, has been key to its success overseas. 

Read this edition as a newsletter: https://the-ken.com/newsletter/make-india-competitive-again/ipo-bound-nephroplus-built-resilience-in-india-its-now-using-it-to-win-overseas/

Tenneco Clean Air, the manufacturer of auto components, went public last week. Aside from being an important moment for the company, that instance was an important outlier.

It listed with a premium close to 27% at a time when many Indian firms backed by private equity have had weak debuts. Its anchor book—pre-IPO share allocation to major institutional investors—was oversubscribed by 170X.

The US parent of Tenneco Clean Air is owned by Apollo Global Management, an asset management firm based in New York. 

Other companies with similar PE backing haven’t fared so well in recent times. Sona Comstar, for instance, went public in 2021 with a P/E multiple of 79—far higher than Tenneco’s 29—courtesy of its backer Blackstone. The stock is currently well below its peak, which it hit in six months after going public.

Here’s a fact: private equity has underperformed the S&P 500 index over one, three, and five years, according to McKinsey & Company. This category of investors in India extract value from their portfolio companies before they head to the bourses, leaving little opportunity for public investors.

The Ken editor Seema Singh shines a light on the situation in this week’s edition of Make India Competitive Again, as read by Brady Ng.

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Read this edition as a newsletter: https://the-ken.com/newsletter/make-india-competitive-again/can-a-pe-firm-not-be-greedy-a-us-firms-india-ipo-offers-a-clue/ 

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