UCL Unveiled: New Courses, India Ties & Future of UK Study Explained
Farida Group Chairperson Rafeeque Ahmed has voiced serious concerns over the U.S. imposing a 25% import tariff on Indian goods, warning it could cripple India's leather and footwear sector. The Chennai-based company, which employs over 22,000 workers—mostly women—fears widespread job losses, cash flow disruptions, and loss of market share to rivals like Vietnam and Indonesia. With further penalties possible over Russian energy imports, uncertainty looms large. Ahmed has urged the Indian government to intervene urgently, stressing that swift action is needed to protect labor-intensive industries and prevent a crisis that could deeply impact India's export economy and employment landscape. #usindia #leatherexports #faridagroup #rafeequeahmed #trumptariffs #indianfootwear #exportcrisis #indiaeconomy #womensjobs #tradeconflict
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Wurfel makes history! Becomes the first Indian Modular Kitchen Brand to win the DNA Paris Design Awards 2025
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Economic Times
6 minutes ago
- Economic Times
Tesla's brand loyalty collapsed after Musk backed Trump, data shows
ANI Tesla for years had more repeat US customers than any other major automotive brand but its loyalty has plunged since CEO Elon Musk endorsed President Donald Trump last summer, according to data from research firm S&P Global Mobility shared exclusively with Reuters. The data, which has not been previously reported, shows Tesla's customer loyalty peaked in June 2024, when 73% of Tesla-owning households in the market for a new car bought another Tesla, according to an S&P analysis of vehicle-registration data in all 50 states. That industry-leading brand loyalty rate started to nosedive in July, that data showed, when Musk endorsed Trump following an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania on the Republican nominee. The rate bottomed out at 49.9% last March, just below the industry average, after Musk launched Trump's budget-slashing Department of Government Efficiency in January and started firing thousands of government workers. Tesla's US loyalty rate has since ticked back up to 57.4% in May, the most recent month the S&P data is available, putting it back above the industry average and about the same as Toyota but behind Chevrolet and Ford. S&P analyst Tom Libby called it "unprecedented" to see the runaway leader in customer loyalty fall so quickly to industry-average levels. "I've never seen this rapid of a decline in such a short period of time," he said. Tesla and Musk did not respond to requests for comment. The timing of Tesla's plunging brand loyalty suggests the CEO's involvement in politics turned off customers in the EV pioneer's eco-conscious customer base, some analysts said. "If they have Democratic leanings, then perhaps they consider other brands in addition to Tesla," said Seth Goldstein, an analyst at Morningstar. Tesla's aging model lineup also faces stiffer competition from an array of EVs from legacy automakers including General Motors, Hyundai and BMW. The only new model Tesla has released since 2020, its triangular Cybertruck, has proved a flop despite Musk's prediction of hundreds of thousands of annual sales. On an April earnings call, Tesla CFO Vaibhav Taneja singled out "the negative impact of vandalism and unwarranted hostility towards our brand and people," but also said there were "several weeks of lost production" when the company retooled factories to produce a refreshed version of its top-selling Model Y. Musk on the April call said that "absent macro issues, we don't see any reduction in demand." Tesla vehicle sales overall are falling globally and have declined 8% in the United States the first five months of 2025, according to S&P. Sales fell 33% over the first six months of the year in Europe, where public backlash to Musk's politicking has been particularly fierce. Musk's increased political activism was "very bad timing" for Tesla, said Garrett Nelson, an analyst who tracks the EV maker at CFRA Research, because it came exactly as the company faced heightened competition from Chinese EV makers and other traditional automakers. He said his top concerns for Tesla are its loss of market share and "what can be done to repair the brand damage." Loyalty nosedive Tesla remains the US electric-vehicle sales leader but has seen its dominance erode as Musk last year delved into politics and focused Tesla more on developing self-driving technology than on new affordable models for human drivers. Customer loyalty is a closely watched auto-industry metric because it is "much more expensive" to take new customers from competitors than to retain existing ones, said S&P's Libby. S&P offers some of the most detailed industry data on automotive purchases because it analyzes vehicle registration data from all 50 states on a household-by-household basis. Unlike survey data, it follows actual vehicle transactions to track how consumers migrate among brands and models. From the fourth quarter of 2021 through the third quarter of last year, more than 60% of Tesla-owning households bought another one for their next car purchase, the data show. Only one other brand - Ford - posted a quarterly loyalty rate exceeding 60% during the period, and only once. Customer defections S&P's data also examines another aspect of the automotive market: Which brands and models are taking customers away from others, and which ones are losing them? Until recently, Tesla was in a different stratosphere than other automotive brands on this metric. For the four years prior to July 2024, Tesla, on average, acquired nearly five new households for every one it lost to another brand. 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