India's EV reality check, TCS layoffs heat up, and a $1.5 billion rejection
Life with an electric car is very different. No one's going to rush in with a giant battery to bail you out, at least not yet. There is HopCharge, a startup that'll come to your location (in five cities) and charge your car. But when things go wrong with an electric vehicle (EV), they can go really wrong.
In my 3,000-km experience, I've encountered vandalized chargers, roadside hawkers refusing to move from charging spots, cars wrongly parked at EV stations, so-called 'fast' chargers working at snail's pace, glitchy mobile apps, and non-existent customer support.
If you're buying an EV, a home charger isn't just useful, it's essential. And if you're thinking of long road trips, even the most enthusiastic EV owner should think twice about relying solely on public chargers for a 400-km journey.
This is the story of India's EV infrastructure, and the critical loopholes that need plugging before electric vehicles can truly go mainstream.
On 27 July, Tata Consultancy Services, India's largest mass tech recruiter, announced that it would lay off about 2% of its global workforce. But as Mint's Jas Bardia and Varun Sood report, insiders have flagged several inconsistencies in how the process has played out.
One big question: what exactly do these layoffs achieve? During a leadership meeting with CEO K Krithivasan, business heads were instructed to tell impacted employees that this isn't about profits, it's about 'restructuring' to enable future growth.
But someone ran the numbers. If the average salary of those laid off (mostly mid- and senior-level staff) is ₹ 25 lakh per year, letting go of 12,000 employees would save about ₹ 3,000 crore. That's just 6.7% of the ₹ 45,000 crore TCS paid out in dividends in FY24. So, was there another way to manage this?
Soon after Operation Sindoor, the Ministry of Defence allocated a $4.5 billion emergency fund to the Army, Navy, and Air Force for procuring critical defence technologies that India currently lacks.
One top contender: a compact, lightweight combat drone that can be launched from almost anywhere, functions without GPS, and operates even in network-jammed environments. The Indian Air Force is particularly keen on this drone, with the deal reportedly finalized in principle and awaiting official sign-off.
That's not all. India is also in the market for uninterrupted, high-resolution satellite surveillance data. While India's own SBS-3 programme aims to address this gap, existing surveillance satellites still fall short in both resolution and refresh rates.
To bridge the gap, the Centre is eyeing foreign partners for round-the-clock, ultra-high-resolution data that could dramatically improve India's real-time intelligence capabilities.
Read the full scoop on what's coming next for India's defence tech.
India's police satellite network, PolNet, first launched in 2002, is long overdue a revamp. And now, a mix of domestic giants and global players, including Adani and Tata group subsidiaries, Navratna PSU Bharat Electronics, and Cisco, are vying to modernize it.
PolNet currently relies on ageing satellite tech. The government's new plan involves bringing in modern, low-earth orbit (LEO) satellites—à la Starlink—for better last-mile connectivity.
But despite several extensions and interest from top vendors, the upgrade is stuck in limbo. At stake are contracts worth hundreds of crores. Who will win the race to modernize PolNet?
Mint's Jatin Grover investigates.
A JPMorgan note suggests that Apple could launch its first foldable iPhone next year, priced at around $2,000. The announcement can't come soon enough: after a strong quarter that beat analyst expectations, Apple's stock rose 3.5%—only to dip again by 6% in the days that followed. With AI seen as its Achilles' heel, can a sleek, foldable device revive Apple's innovation image?
And finally, meet Andrew Tulloch, the AI engineer who reportedly turned down a $1.5 billion (yes, billion) offer from Meta to rejoin the company. Tulloch, who spent nearly 12 years at Meta before joining OpenAI and later Mira Murati's new venture, Thinking Machines Lab, is now at the heart of Silicon Valley's most aggressive talent war. Zuckerberg, sources say, still hasn't given up.
Transformer by Mint is your weekly lens into the biggest shifts in India's technology landscape. From boardroom battles and AI breakthroughs to defence tech and electric cars, we track the innovations shaping your future.
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