Sachin Naik retweeted
ನಾಳೆ ಸಂಜೆ 4.30ಕ್ಕೆ ದೊಮ್ಮಲೂರಿನ BIC ಅಂಗಳದಲ್ಲೊಂದು ಚರ್ಚೆ. ಬನ್ನಿ.
@AnandaramSanjay @sachindn
Sachin Naik retweeted
The biggest illusion sold to the middle class is that capitalism gives everyone an equal opportunity to become rich if they work hard enough.
Look beyond the slogans. Capitalism rewards ownership of capital far more than the sale of labour. The wealthy own businesses, assets, land and financial instruments. The middle class largely depends on salaries, savings and investments to build wealth.
And wealth doesn't move in a straight line. It moves in cycles.
During periods of abundance, easy credit, rising asset prices and economic expansion, wealth spreads across society. More people participate, take risks and accumulate assets.
But when the cycle reverses, the rules change. Inflation erodes purchasing power. Recessions threaten jobs. Debt becomes expensive. Asset prices collapse. Leveraged investors are forced to sell. Those who depend on salaries and savings often suffer the most, while those with liquidity and access to capital can buy distressed assets at discounted prices.
This is how wealth concentration can accelerate through economic cycles.
The system doesn't necessarily need everyone to remain poor, but it does reward those who own capital disproportionately over those who depend entirely on labour.
The biggest mistake the middle class makes is believing that hard work alone will protect its wealth.
Understand capital rotation. Understand liquidity. Understand who owns the assets and who is forced to sell when the cycle turns.
Because the people who own the ladder are not necessarily playing the same game as those trying to climb it.
BE READY FOR THE SHIFT.
Sachin Naik retweeted
Most people who dream of a quiet life without work are just exhausted from work they hate. The reason you get bored on vacation after a week is that you are meant to move, pursue something exciting, and engage your body and mind in something useful. Do whatever it takes to find work that energizes you. It may take years, but it will have the most meaningful effect on your quality of life.
Sachin Naik retweeted
🚨𝐁𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆: "𝟏𝟎𝟎% 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐧-𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐞𝐝, 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐮𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐝 & 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐬𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐩𝐡𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐥𝐚𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐡 𝐛𝐲 𝐎𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝟐𝟑, 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟖"- 𝐀𝐬𝐡𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐢 𝐕𝐚𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐧𝐚𝐰
Speaking at the NDTV World Summit, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw set a definitive target date to mark India’s transition from an electronics assembler to an indigenous IP powerhouse.
Key takeaways from the announcement:
🔬 The Motherboard Breakthrough:
Designing a phone’s PCB within an ultra-tight form factor—integrating RF, antennas, compute, display, memory, and power management—was issued as an indigenous challenge 3 years ago.
• Two Indian design firms took it up; one cracked a flagship 5G+ design.
• The platform was chosen on contract by the largest US telecom provider.
• The phones are already manufactured, shipped, and actively used by US consumers today.
🚀 From Policy Paralysis to #3 Global Export:
Vaishnaw pushed back against critics claiming India is "playing catch-up," pointing to 40 years of industrial control (1950–1990) and a decade of policy paralysis (2004–2014) that held manufacturing back.
• Post-2014 Make-in-India reforms propelled electronics to India’s #3 merchandise export category.
• The sector is now on track to climb to #2.
Moving boxes from China doesn’t make you an Indian mobile brand.
Interesting to see so many Indian brands suddenly entering the smartphone market. Even more interesting is how nationality is being used as a marketing weapon to win over consumers.
Building products in India is hard. Nobody expects it to happen overnight.
But start somewhere. Own a small part of the product. Build some engineering capability. Learn, improve, and gradually own more.
That’s how an ecosystem gets built. Not through PR campaigns.
The real question is: why the sudden rush?
Rising memory prices have pushed up smartphone costs, forcing established brands to vacate parts of the sub-₹15,000 segment. That has created an opportunity for smaller ODMs and brands importing ready-made products.
Nothing wrong with spotting an opportunity. That’s business.
But let’s not confuse a market opportunity with nation-building.
An Indian brand should eventually stand for what it creates, not just where it sells.
@CounterPointTR @MadhavSheth1
You don't have to manufacture a product to build a brand. But putting an Indian name on an imported product doesn't mean you've built Indian product capability.
Trading is a legitimate business. Building a brand is a legitimate achievement. Building a product ecosystem is a different ambition.
The problem begins when we sell the first two as the third.
Ai+ Smartphone was India's fastest-growing smartphone brand in Q3 at 306% YoY @CounterPointTR Our base was small, so keeping up 300% growth may be impossible, but we're happy to pave the way for Indian brands to compete with established & respected global ones.
Indian brands share is up from 2% to 7%, and we're just getting started.
Congratulations @hari_om_rai
counterpointresearch.com/en/…
Sachin Naik retweeted
in hindsight it will be obvious that taste was the differentiator in most tech products and experiences.
as intelligence became ubiquitous, software development (and soon consumer hardware manufacturing) became commoditized, it was the accumulation of small thoughtful decisions, restraints, and authentic stories and brand-signaled quality that made something coveted.
Sachin Naik retweeted
Can small town boys build a company that gets acquired?
Can they build an original consumer electronics product from scratch that aims to solve a deeper problem affecting children in India, excessive phone and TV use?
Here is the story of 3 technology obsessed engineers from Hubballi, who built a company, got acquired, and are now building something completely original to tackle a much deeper problem.
A thread. 🧵 1/15
It’s inevitable . So beautifully articulated on why we lost the mobile race , what is R&D and what and how a brand should think .
@getpeid thanks for letting all Indians know that this is possible. And showing us the path by taking the first step
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗤𝘂𝗶𝗲𝘁 𝗦𝗵𝗶𝗳𝘁 𝗛𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻 𝗜𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗮’𝘀 𝗘𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝗘𝗰𝗼𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺
I’ve been visiting Electronica & Productronica for years. This year felt different.
Not because of one big announcement, but because of a lot of small signals that suggest India’s electronics ecosystem may finally be getting deeper.
1. PCBs
I’ve generally believed in open markets and was never fully convinced that adding duties to restrict imports was the best way to build an industry. But perhaps I underestimated how much of an initial push an ecosystem needs.
This time, I saw quite a few small and mid-sized PCB companies. Some have built interesting models: 24–48 hour prototype PCBs in India, backed by Chinese partners for larger production runs.
I counted 10+ players offering prototype PCBs. That is an interesting signal.
You don’t get that many prototype suppliers unless there are enough people designing things to prototype.
2. EMS is becoming an ecosystem
EMS players were everywhere. And around them was almost everything needed to build a factory SMT machines, inspection equipment, storage, tooling, even suppliers of second-hand Yamaha SMT machines.
More capacity → more competition → lower production costs.
If this continues, India should become increasingly price competitive in electronics manufacturing.
But here’s what was missing.
Very little box-build capability. Hardly any ODM presence where you can walk in with a requirement and come out with a working product.
That tells us where we are in the journey.
We are getting better at making things, but still have a long way to go in designing and owning products.
There’s nothing wrong with starting lower in the value chain. The danger is staying there.
PLI and manufacturing incentives have created momentum. Hopefully the next phase also supports design-led product companies.
The question is no longer only: Can India manufacture electronics?
Increasingly, yes.
The more important question is: How quickly can we move from manufacturing other people’s products to designing our own?
Next year, I hope to see not just more EMS and PCB companies, but more ODMs, tooling companies, component suppliers, paint shops and the hundreds of smaller businesses that turn manufacturing capacity into a real product ecosystem.
That will be the real sign that India is moving up the value chain.
We have received an inquiry for our UPS units in Nigeria . Struggling to send them . Our regular shippers are not able to . DHL out rightly denied. And FedEx is asking documents we are not able to understand.
Any one here can connect me to right agents ? Africa is growing and really wxciting to explore this export opportunity
Sachin Naik retweeted
The strange thing about getting older is that you slowly stop fearing failure. Age removes the comforting illusion that there will always be a better time. There probably won’t be. The older you get, the less your life needs planning and the more it needs courage.
While I am not an expert here. But if this is the scenario which also maps to muted market performance . It’s a serious issue. Fudging numbers to show a 2.8% growth to 7.8% just to look good on paper does not help anyone
Sachin Naik retweeted
>@navamcapital’s Fund I has logged its first exit!
It was our privilege to be investors in pioneering semiconductor venture, C2i Semiconductors, which has been acquired by Germany’s Infineon Technologies.
There is a lot more that India is going to innovate and deliver in semiconductor chip design - watch this space!
🚀🛰️🔬🧪🧬⚡️⚙️🛜🏭🦾
C2i Semiconductors was founded in 2024. Two years on, Infineon, Germany's largest semiconductor company, has agreed to acquire it!
@NavamCapital invested in C2i's Series A round alongside Yali Capital, @peakxvpartners and others.
thehindubusinessline.com/inf…
economictimes.indiatimes.com…
C2i founders Ram Anant, Preetam Tadeparthy, Vikram Gakhar and B.S. Dattatreya went after a constraint that the AI build-out has made unavoidable: as accelerators draw more current and switch loads faster, the bottleneck migrates from the processor to the power delivered to it.
C2i's solution is a software-defined voltage regulator platform: the Manas controller and the Sarayu smart power stage, architected, taped out and validated in Bengaluru. The received wisdom holds that India carries out only supporting work for the global semiconductor industry: verification, layout and physical design for architectures is done elsewhere. C2i has shown what is possible.
The intellectual property was created here, and a global incumbent has acquired the company that developed it. IP-differentiated deep tech, built by top tier talent that chose to build in India, funded by patient risk capital at the point of maximum technical risk.
Taking just two years from incorporation to acquisition by one of the world's leading power semiconductor firms is not good fortune - it speaks to the quality of work done by the C2i team!
C2i Semiconductors is an early example of what is going to unfold - India will not merely assemble and test what others design. It will design what others buy. Every outcome of this kind grows the pool of founders willing to take a swing, and expands the pool of capital willing to fund them.
Congratulations to C2i founders Ram Anant, Preetam Tadeparthy, Vikram Gakhar and B.S. Dattatreya, as well as the entire C2i team!
AI started with ask a question, get an answer.
Now we’re seeing AI move into drug discovery and some of the hardest problems in science.
The really interesting part of AI may not be chat at all. It may be what happens when intelligence gets applied to the physical world.
Still very early.
Many drugs work by binding to a specific target in the body and blocking or changing what it does. An important first step in the drug development process is designing a molecule that can bind tightly to its target. Traditionally, that's meant weeks or months of expert work per target, sifting through a large number of candidates to identify the few that work.
We wanted to test if Claude could successfully design novel protein binders from scratch (also called de novo design). With a protein design prompt written by a human expert, Claude autonomously designed protein binders against 14 out of 15 targets.
We then worked with Adaptyv Bio and Twist Bioscience, who independently built and tested the proteins Claude designed.
Sachin Naik retweeted
Have you signed up for the Masterclasses with @RMantri yet? Here's the Google form to sign up! Hurry! Limited seats only
forms.gle/1PmY2nvvdJ4pMwyp9 – at Mumbai, India
🇮🇳 India’s journey of independence
1947 — Freedom 🇮🇳
1950s — Education & Institution Building 🎓
1960s–70s — Food Independence 🌾
1980s–90s — Technology & Space 🚀
2000s — Global Talent & IT 💻
2020s — Product Independence ⚙️
Every generation built a new kind of independence.
Now it’s our turn to design, engineer and build world-class products in India, for the world.
Happy Independence Day! 🇮🇳
Sachin Naik retweeted
A few months ago, a founder who had appeared on our podcast asked me a question: If you look at Karnataka, what is that one thing that can be counted as our number one strength?
It made me think. I realised that one of Karnataka’s biggest strengths may be our focus on education over the last 70 plus years. The mathas, educational institutions and the government all played a role in building a strong education ecosystem.
That created a large pool of educated talent. Over the last 30 years, a good chunk of this talent got absorbed into the services economy, led by IT, and worked with global companies, travelled the world, learnt technology, understood businesses, systems and processes, and gained deep domain knowledge.
Many of these people are now in their 40s. They are financially settled, possibly have dual incomes and often have enough runway to take a risk for a few years.
Yet we don’t see many doing that. Some prefer a stable job, and there is nothing wrong with that. But many are unhappy with their jobs, want to do something on their own, but fear taking the risk.
I think what is missing is belief. The belief that they too can build something of their own.
This is where @mundhebanni comes in. Our small attempt is to tell stories of local heroes from the entrepreneurial world, celebrate them and create a layer of motivation and knowledge ecosystem that is deeply mindful of the culture and context of these people, so that more people get the confidence to take that leap.
There is a lot of talent sitting out there. We just need to unlock it. With AI acting as a force multiplier, there can be no excuses for not trying.
ಬೇರೆ ಯಾರೂ ಈ ಮಾತನ್ನು ಹೇಳೋದಿಲ್ಲ, ಹಿಂದೆ ತಳ್ಳೋ ಜನರೇ ಇಲ್ಲಿ ಊರಲೆಲ್ಲ..
ಮುಂದೆ ಬನ್ನಿ, ಇನ್ನಾದರೂ ಜೀವನದಲ್ಲಿ ಮುಂದೆ ಬನ್ನಿ 🙌
@akaranth @Shishir_S_U
Sachin Naik retweeted
Business is often seen as the art of acquisition. Acquiring talent, customers, revenue, profits, mindshare, marketshare. Building and growing requires consumption, addition, parlaying some of this into a lot of that.
But the smartest businesses, the ones that tend to stick around for the long haul, know that existence is also about avoidance.
Avoiding careening variable costs, avoiding getting involved with things that aren’t core to your business, avoiding spending time on things that don’t matter, avoiding bad investments, avoiding people who don’t help you prosper, and even avoiding customers who aren’t the right fit.
However, there’s something even more fundamental to avoid. It would be easy to call it “complexity” but that’s not quite it. Complexity can be necessary, and intricacy can be quite beautiful. Just stare into a Moorish mosaic and you’ll know it.
So complexity isn’t the issue.
Overkill is the issue.
Overkill is the dust that settles on the stuff that took a lot of energy to build or buy, but turned out not to be necessary. The over-engineered, over-designed, over-hired, over-litigated, the over-spent, over-promised, over-deliberated.
Overkill is the policy that was written but never enacted. The technology that was purchased that was never used. The seven steps that could be handled in two. The nine people in a meeting made for three. The business equivalent of the 8 bedroom house for a family of four. The cooks when you don’t even have a kitchen.
Overkill is using five different products to run a single project. Overkill is an seven-stage interview process that exhausts everyone involved. Overkill is acting like a company 100x your size. Overkill is buying what they bought but that you don’t need. Overkill is paying thousands for something worth hundreds. Overkill is hoping that losing more will turn into a win.
Every day is an opportunity to find just right. To toss that policy that’s in the way. To slim down the stack. To sharpen things up. To eliminate the work that doesn’t need to be done. To polish the scratched glass so you can see through again.
Amass what you need, but ignore even more. Kill overkill.