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👋 Hi friends,
Welcome to the latest edition of Newley’s Notes, a newsletter containing my recent Bloomberg stories, must-read links on tech and life, and funny dog videos.
Painting of the week, above: Dog Lying in the Snow (ca. 1911), by Franz Marc
👉 I’m excited to share that our Bloomberg series on H-1B visas is a finalist for an investigative data journalism award at this year’s Online Journalism Awards!
The full list of finalists — including several other entries from Bloomberg — is here. And our entry is here.
The story I helped out with was our investigation out in February: Former Staffers Say India’s Biggest IT Firm Was Gaming the US Visa System 🎁 <– Gift link
🛍️ Meanwhile, my latest story, with colleagues Sankalp Phartiyal, Alex Gabriel Simon, and Satviki Sanjay: World’s Fastest Deliveries Ignite an Investment Frenzy in India 🎁 <– Gift link
It begins:
A few miles from the bustling, labyrinthine markets of Old Delhi — where traders have hawked spices and textiles for centuries — a quiet patch of low-slung warehouses hums with a radically different form of commerce. From here, India is executing one of the boldest bets in modern retail: delivering nearly anything to your doorstep in less time than it takes to hard-boil an egg.
India’s instant commerce revolution is gathering extraordinary pace, fueled by surging demand, rising competition and billions of dollars in global investor capital. Startups are jostling with Amazon.com Inc. and Walmart Inc.’s-backed Flipkart to blanket the nation’s cities with small, hyperlocal warehouses and delivery riders — promising groceries, electronics, and in some cases, even gold coins in under 10 minutes.
It’s a model that has burned through mountains of cash — and flamed out — in nearly every other major market. Yet investors are betting that India will be different. With dense cities, low labor costs, and a rising class of more than 730 million digital-first Gen Z and millennial consumers accustomed to instant services, the country may be the one place where 10-minute delivery can finally work at scale.
Click through to read the rest.
Here are 10 items worth your time this week:
1) 🇹🇭 Thailand has its third prime minister since 2023, Anutin Charnvirakul…
2) ✈️ …while former PM Thaksin Shinawatra flew to Dubai, where he lived earlier when in exile — and then returned to Thailand today.
3) 🇺🇸 Billionaire Ray Dalio on the US, in an interview with the FT: “I think that what is happening now politically and socially is analogous to what happened around the world in the 1930-40 period.”
4) 🇪🇨 An important WSJ story: how Mexican cartels have engulfed Ecuador in violence.
5) 🤖 The New Yorker‘s John Cassidy on artificial intelligence and economic growth.
6) 🎧 Related podcast episode, which I recommend highly: “Why AI Isn’t What You Think,” featuring longtime tech analyst and writer Benedict Evans.
7) 📚 The Ezra Klein podcast, but just the books.
8) 💻 RIP OG blogging platform TypePad.
9) 🎥 Quentin Tarantino on Quentin Tarantino’s best movie.
10) 🐕 Dog video of the week: “Doggo moments when they think no one is home.”
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🤗 What’s new with you? Hit reply to send me tips, queries, random comments, and videos of canines who deserve their own private reveries.
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👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,
Newley