Can The Sensex Hit 105,000 by December 2025
It is quite clear that people are now projecting beyond two quarters or so
On Episode 529 of The Core Report, financial journalist Govindraj Ethiraj talks to Sumit Jain, Deputy CIO at ASK Investment Managers Private Limited as well as Karan Taurani, Senior Vice President - Research Analyst (Media, Consumer Discretionary & Internet) at Elara Capital.
(00:00) Stories of the Day
(01:09) Can The Sensex Hit 105,000 by December 2025
(03:33) Going back to the 101 of investing and stock picking
(15:36) Oil prices are holding around $70
(17:24) Musk partners Airtel to bring internet service even as Tesla car sales crash globally.
(18:33) What does Reliance Retail’s downsizing mean for the industry?
NOTE: This transcript contains the host's monologue and includes interview transcripts by a machine. Human eyes have gone through the script but there might still be errors in some of the text, so please refer to the audio in case you need to clarify any part. If you want to get in touch regarding any feedback, you can drop us a message on [email protected].
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Good morning, it's Wednesday, the 12th of March and this is Govindraj Ethiraj, headquartered in Broadcasting and Streaming, as always from Mumbai, a very warm financial capital right now. And just before we start, this is a holiday shortened week. We have Holi coming up in a few days, so there will be no edition later this week.
Our top stories and themes for the day.
Can the Sensex hit 105,000 by December 25?
Going back to the 101 of investing and stock picking in these times.
Oil prices are still steady, holding around $70 a barrel.
Elon Musk partners Airtel to bring internet services into India via satellite, even as Tesla car sales crash globally.
And what does Reliance Retail's downsizing mean for the retail industry?
Morgan Stanley Puts It Out There
This is, of course, a hedged call with the downside offered alongside the upside. But it's worth noting that Morgan Stanley has been brave or foolhardy enough to call a Sensex at 105,000 in December 2025. And that makes it nearly 41% up from the current levels.
Even Morgan Stanley's base case is optimistic from the current levels at 93,000 by 25, that's December 25, up around 25% from the current levels. There is, of course, a bear case scenario where the Sensex goes down another 6% to about 70,000 levels by December 25 again. Now, it's quite clear that people are projecting beyond two quarters or so as we will shortly hear.
Before I come back to Morgan Stanley and its calls, on Tuesday, the market started weak as they were expected to on the back of the pounding scene on Wall Street on Monday, thanks to the Trump uncertainty and the prospect of damage, if not an all-out recession in the US economy, something that President Trump himself did not rule out. But unlike earlier trading sessions, the bulls were pulling back almost every point that was being lost, almost like a continuous tug-of-war, where you could see the fight was slightly stronger on the bull side, though the markets did close down slightly, though only the Sensex. The Sensex started the day with a negative gap of about 371 points, inched up and finally closed down just 13 points at 74,102.
The Nifty 50 wandered around but closed with a gain of 38 points at 22,498. There was an interesting stock movement with IndusInd Bank, its stock falling about 27%, after it said that an internal review of its derivative portfolio showed up discrepancies for which it estimated losses of about 1,577 crores or about 2.35% of its net worth. But the broader markets were steady, with the BSE mid-cap going up about 0.7 and the small-cap going down the same level. On Wall Street on Monday, it was party time for the bears. All the indices took a beating with the Nasdaq Composite seeing its worst day since September 2022. The 30-stock Dow Jones, which lost about 900 points, closed below its 200-day moving average for the first time since November 1, 2023.
Nasdaq saw its worst days in September 2022. When asked about the possibility of a recession, President Donald Trump said in a Fox News interview over the weekend that the economy was going through a period of transition. Earlier Treasury Secretary also told CNBC that there could be a detox period for the economy as the administration slashed federal spending.
Meanwhile, Wall Street looked like it was set to face more selling pressure on Tuesday after stock futures were showing flat overnight and investors struggled to gain ground after that steep sell-off. CNBC reported S&P futures, and Dow Jones and Nasdaq 100 futures were all trading lower. Now back to Morgan Stanley's India outlook, which is definitely more bullish.
It said that valuations are now the most attractive since COVID-19. That gives you a clean 5-year horizon. This is likely to be a stock picker's market in contrast to one driven by top-down or macro factors since the COVID pandemic, and that's of course an interesting way of looking at it.
For the markets to stage a recovery from here on, the most crucial cue according to Morgan Stanley will be global factors, including US policy and global growth rates. Well, he also said that a global recession or a near recession will challenge their call and keep Indian equities off the highs in 2025, though their picks are cyclicals, defensives, small caps, mid caps, and large caps. More specifically, they are overweight on financials, consumer, discretionary, industrials, and technology.
And their top stocks that they are overweight, so if you want to keep a watch in whichever way, is Jubilant, Mahindra and Mahindra, Maruti Suzuki, Trent, Bajaj Finance, ICICI Bank, Titan Company, Larsen & Toubro, Ultratech, and Infosys. The larger pitch is that India will be the world's most sought-after consumer market, will undergo a major energy transition as energy consumption increases per capita, credit to gross domestic product will rise, and manufacturing could gain share in GDP. All of these are, of course, somewhat general trends which are all likely to materialise.
The time frame, of course, could vary for some of those cases. However, Morgan Stanley does talk about a consumption recovery which is expected to get broad-based as the income tax cuts propel urban demand to support the buoyant trend in rural consumption levels as well. So now, whether those income tax specifically trigger consumption jumps is something that we have to see, and that's a question I'll be posing shortly again as well.
Now, that's in India. It is a fact that global flows could shift around in coming days given the massive selling that we've seen in the US markets. Interestingly, Citigroup has downgraded US equities to neutral from overweight while upgrading China to overweight, saying that the US exceptionalism is at least on pause.
Citigroup has been overweight American stocks since October 23, and now things are obviously changing, and they also said that Chinese stocks look attractive even after their recent rally given DeepSeek's AI technology breakthrough, the government's support for the tech sector, and still cheap valuations. All points to note. Back home again, I spoke with Sumit Jain, Deputy Chief Investment Officer of ASK, or ASK Investment Managers, which calls itself India's largest discretionary equity portfolio management services, or PMS house, and I began by asking him how he was seeing the shift in flows and how markets were looking in coming quarters, and also where he was looking for value and in what kinds of sectors.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Sumit Jain: The kind of impact that Indian markets have seen, at least from the selling perspective of FIIs, it has been very sharp. It has been more than 10-12 billion dollars in just about few months. So, this kind of selling actually also led to a lot of money moving towards United Streets.
As you rightly said that with the fall in US, we may see some of these outflows actually receding. In fact, this is not the only factor. We really believe that the outflows actually has been driven not only by global vagaries, but with also from the perspective that Indian earnings have not been great.
We are at a stage where for few quarters now, our earnings growth has been single digit. With all the steps that have been taken in many of the areas, there is high chance that next year we should be mid-teens in terms of earnings growth. So, multiple factors actually now can contribute to how FII flows can actually play out, global stuff which actually can alter the course, and also some semblance of earnings growth in the country.
So, which is why we believe it's only a matter of time that we start to see FII flows actually, outflows receding from the country.
Govindraj Ethiraj: Right. So, if I were to take a step back, if you were to look at the way the Indian markets have been behaving in the last, let's say, six months to a year, they appear to be tracking Wall Street. They are, of course, decoupled in some ways from China, other emerging markets.
Are you getting a sense on how things could move in coming months? I mean, sort of India moved differently from others. Could it track something else?
Sumit Jain: In the short term, when foreign flows are concentrated in a significant manner and when these foreign flows are globally linked, those can have impact on our markets. It's not that India is completely decoupled. When you think about India from the perspective of merchandise trade or services, these two contribute between 20 and 25 percent of our GDP, right.
They can get impacted by global values. However, with all the changes that are happening in global supply chains, we believe we should be net beneficiary of the uncertainties that world is presenting. But there are a lot of or many parts of the country which are really, really domestically and which are relatively more insulated with how things are happening globally.
Those would mean businesses in rural economy, even domestic consumption to a great extent, certain manufacturing related businesses. We really believe this is a phase where we should start to see gradual improvement in many of these areas.
Govindraj Ethiraj: You touched upon earnings outlook and you said that one reason why there has been outflows, of course, the perception and fact of weak earnings, which you're saying now could recover. How is your sense? I mean, we are now in March, heading to the end of the quarter and year, financial year.
How are things looking?
Sumit Jain: In the short term, possibly earnings may remain subdued. But we are already seeing steps that have been taken up by the government. In many areas, we are seeing project execution, seeing acceleration, even the impact of tax cuts that have been announced in the latest projects.
And also quite a few of the incentives that are being given by state government should mean that we should start to see earnings acceleration over period. Is it going to happen pretty sharply in the short period of time? Probably not.
But clearly, we would see improvement possibly in quarter or two quarters. Really difficult to say whether it's necessarily going to be this quarter or next. But next year seems relatively better than what it is looking like versus FY25.
So we think that possibly mid-teens kind of earnings growth is something India Incorporate should kind of deliver. And when you say project execution, you mean public spending and government spending? Yes.
So government's focus this time is to make sure that the budgets that are there, which have not been met, at least if you think about FY25 CapEx number as well, which was announced in the budget last year, will not be met. So to that extent, this would be low. So the focus is how can we meet the revised numbers that have been announced?
Govindraj Ethiraj: What are the themes, and I know you're following a few, that are standing out for you at this point of time in the context of all of this? Muted earnings, valuations under question, flows steady, at least overseas, domestic, of course, flows seem still strong. So what are the sectors that are looking good to you and why?
Sumit Jain: Before sectors, I would first like to talk about what would work in markets at the current point. Last three, four years, markets have behaved in a particular manner. We believe we are back to 101 of investing.
Focus actually has to be really high on what is the quality of business that you're buying? What is the quality of management that you're buying? What is the execution prowess that those managements deliver?
This execution prowess actually has to show up in a superior profit growth. And this profit growth in isolation is not enough. This profit growth actually has to be backed by superior capital efficiency.
Since we are in an era where uncertainties are increasing, we believe that markets will start to value those businesses that have the ability to deliver a superior compounding over a long period of time. So those businesses possibly should start to see valuation polarisation. Having said that, we believe there are a couple of opportunities in multiple areas, be it discretionary consumption or even the entire healthcare ecosystem, businesses in manufacturing, businesses like energy transition, circular economy, logistics.
Many of these areas will offer very interesting opportunities from a secular perspective in the country.
Govindraj Ethiraj: When you talk about superior compounding over a period of time, now isn't that what is already driven valuations to this level or you still feel there is opportunity before I come to the sectors?
Sumit Jain: See, last few years were an era where earnings growth for Indian corporate itself was 20% plus. Now we are into an era where earnings growth possibly from FY26 onwards should be in mid-teens. That would mean not all businesses would be delivering profit growth at that breakneck speed.
So markets actually will now start to segregate those businesses which are delivering versus those which actually got lifted when tide was going up. So to that extent, execution will start to make a big difference.
Govindraj Ethiraj: So you talked about consumer discretionary and that was seen to be getting a lift because of tax relief to middle class India. Has that played out in the way people were expecting it would or is it looking like it's going to play out like that?
Sumit Jain: It has played out partly but I think there is more to come there. So few businesses in tourism, few businesses in reality, those premium discretionary consumption actually did well. With tax cuts that have come by which will start to show up from next year onwards, there would be relatively higher money in the pockets of the population.
That coupled with relatively lower impact because of inflation, we really believe those small ticket consumption should actually start to see improvement. Even rural economy which has already started to show some improvement as post-up this quarterly results season, many of the managements have been talking about improvement there. That should kind of continue.
Govindraj Ethiraj: And you talked about healthcare and its many constituents which are looking good to you. So can you walk us through that?
Sumit Jain: Entire healthcare ecosystem actually have many sub-components and every component is different. So when we look at healthcare ecosystem, we really believe domestic branded formulation businesses offers huge stable growth over next many years. Similarly, CDMO while current uncertainty may have some impact sentimentally but India has logical reasons to be significantly bigger in that space.
Similarly, US pharma generic space, we believe that the rate of decline is kind of slowing down. And even if you think about drug shortages there, they are kind of increasing. So that is one area.
Similarly, on the infrastructure side with respect to pharmaceutical, the entire space of hospitals, diagnostics, medical consumables, those also offers very interesting opportunity at the current point in time.
Govindraj Ethiraj: And you feel if I were to stick to healthcare, many of these areas valuations are still attractive?
Sumit Jain: See, what we are looking for in this area is what kind of growth can these businesses deliver over next many years. And we will start to see these businesses getting a lot more organised. Think about medical consumables.
This is a significantly large industry. A lot of it is imported. There are huge smaller guys there.
As we start to see consolidation in this space, we would see significantly decent growth for many years into future. So when growth runway is significantly longer, at that point, looking at short term overvaluation, it can't be significantly overvalued. But slight overvaluation, I think market would be ready to deal with that.
Govindraj Ethiraj: And that's an interesting example. And Sumit, thank you so much for joining me.
Sumit Jain: Thank you, Govind. Thanks for having me here. It was great talking to you.
Oil Prices Are Steady
Oil prices rose very slightly, about 1% on Tuesday, thanks to a weakness in the US dollar. Concerns of a US slowdown are growing. Impact of trade tariffs are obviously continuing to weigh.
Rent futures were up and oil stood at about $70 a barrel on Tuesday. Interestingly, switching away from oil but staying within energy, solar energy accounted for 84% of new electricity generation capacity added to the US power grid last year. Of course, the new US administration's energy policies may change that, according to a report published on Tuesday quoted by Reuters.
America installed about 50 gigawatts of new solar capacity in 2024, the Solar Energy Industries Association and Wood McKinsey Group said in the report, adding that 2024 was the largest single year of growth by any energy technology in over two decades.
Cotton Imports Rise
India's cotton imports in 24-25 are likely to double from a thanks to a decline in acreage planted and adverse weather, Reuters quoted the Cotton Association of India saying.
Production is likely to fall about 10% from a year ago to about 29.5 million bales, even as demand is expected to rise to about 31.5 million bales. India is the world's second largest producer of cotton and these imports could help support global prices, which have fallen to their lowest in more than four years, particularly after China levied duties on imports from the United States. The Cotton Association of India said India could import about three million bales of cotton and the overall demand for cotton and potentially higher clothing and apparel production in India was something that was pointed out to us by members of the apparel industry just two weeks ago from Coimbatore.
Tesla Sales Fall
Tesla's shares plunged to their worst day in more than four years, extending that 2025 slide, and the fall of the shares is actually to do with the fall in sales of cars. The stock fell 15% on Monday after UBS Group AG's Joseph Spack cut delivery projections both for the first quarter and the full year. Other analysts lowered their estimates too for Tesla deliveries on March 6, according to Bloomberg.
Spack sees Tesla handling about 367,000 vehicles this quarter, which is a 16% reduction from his prior estimate, and he's no longer expecting the company to sell more vehicles in 2025 than last year, projecting a roughly 5% annual drop. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg, however, feel there could be a roughly 10% increase for the year and the company could return to growth in 2025. That's according to the company itself.
Now, electric cars are facing headwinds in many parts of the world, except maybe in China, where Chinese brands are in any case dominating the field, having everyone's lunch, and extending their chops to the rest of the world, including in India, although or albeit more slowly.
More on Musk and an India angle coming up.
Why is Reliance Retail Downsizing?
Last week, Bloomberg reported that the Ambani's are overhauling their retail business in an attempt to assuage investors who are looking for an exit option in the form of a public listing. Slowing sales is a concern for the company after brokers pegged its valuation as low as $50 billion, that's about half the amount at which it last raised funds about two years ago. Now, this was apparently acknowledged to investors in recent discussions.
It was also acknowledged that the company had grown too big too quickly as a result of expanding across formats and geographies, according to people who spoke to Bloomberg. Reliance Retail operates through a structure of about 60 units that include mass market and luxury superstores, beauty and clothes apps, and quick grocery delivery platform, JioMart. The current focus, according to Bloomberg, which is also actually quite visible now, is to limit physical store expansion, cut back on marketing budgets, and merge Reliance brands with the umbrella retail entity and review some global brand partnerships.
Hiring has also slowed down. Funds like Qatar Investment Authority and General Atlantic had invested about $8.2 billion between 2020 and 2023 for a roughly 12% stake in the firm, according to an analysis by Stanford C. Bernstein quoted by Bloomberg.
Reliance Retail did about 273,000 crores of revenue and about 11,000 crores in profits for the year ended March 24. It had about 340 million customers at that time, around 19,000 stores and four apps. I reached out to consumer and retail analyst Karan Taurani and senior vice president at Alara Securities and I began by asking him what the slowdown or the pullback by Reliance Retail actually reflected.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Karan Taurani: The situation is quite mixed right now. Two things are happening. One is, you know, in terms of the consumption and the spending, it's a mixed bag as far as urban market is concerned.
Whatever expansion we have seen beyond the urban markets, you know, things haven't picked up as compared to what one would have estimated. That's the first thing. Second is that the competitive intensity is growing in itself in every category, every segment.
And the third thing is the disruption from online, right? So the online business is kind of doing very well. Quick commerce is catering to multiple categories, including FMCG, grocery, even, you know, some bit of apparel to a smaller extent and other categories like wellness and beauty, personal care put together.
So there are concerns as far as retail business is concerned. And Reliance, as we all know, you know, they're a large player with more than 18,000-19,000 stores which are present. And, you know, in these kinds of times where things are uncertain, you know, they will have to kind of curtail their investments.
Also, one interesting point, if you look at is that Reliance is not able to scale up on their online business. So their online revenue contribution remains to be in the range of 17 to 18%. And that's been constant since the last, you know, 8 to 10 quarters.
Obviously, it's a very large scale in terms of the way they operate and the revenue size is very large. But they haven't been able to scale up on their online revenue contribution as well.
Govindraj Ethiraj: I have a couple of questions. So let me start with the online part. Now, this is a 300,000 pro plus company with over 10,000 pros of profits.
So if they wanted to, they could discount their way through all the quick commerce players in the market, couldn't they?
Karan Taurani: See, quick commerce is not a game of discounting, firstly. So, you know, there could be many players who could come into the quick commerce market and just, you know, give discounts and try and make business sense out of it. But that's not the case.
I think quick commerce is a game of technology. It's a game of assortment. It's a game of convenience.
It's a game of user experience in terms of knowing your customer, knowing your, you know, local markets put together. That is why I think, you know, e-commerce also, as of now, we feel that has a low likelihood of getting success into quick commerce, because quick commerce does a very deep dive in terms of every market. And that's not possible for every company to do it.
So just capital, just for discounting is not something which will give a more to a quick commerce company. So I think Reliance obviously has tried digital businesses. They've tried GeoMart in 30 days delivery, all those kind of new things.
But none of them have been able to, you know, match up to the quick commerce experience.
Govindraj Ethiraj: Got it. So let me come back to the large stores. And they have obviously thousands of stores.
And what's your sense on what is worked for them versus what is not at this point?
Karan Taurani: So I think what works for them is the scale, the size that they operate, the kind of wide variety of categories that they have. They have got a very large presence in terms of the online fashion market. Ajio is kind of a market leader as far as online fashion is concerned.
So these are certain things, you know, which have probably worked in their favour. I think what's not worked is the offline business, I would say, on both on the grocery side, even on the apparel side. So I think these are some problems which Reliance faces.
Offering businesses are not able to grow beyond a certain point. They made entry into multiple segments, the white goods segment, the jewellery segment. But the competitive intensity is very high in all these segments.
Despite whatever efforts that they've been doing in terms of store expansion, they're not able to kind of do well ahead of peers.
Govindraj Ethiraj: But is the market somewhere capped and are people maybe not accepting it? So at 19,000 stores, is there really potential at this point of time in this country to grow for a retail brand?
Karan Taurani: So there is potential, no doubt about it. But right now, as I said, the market is quite competitive. You are seeing online brands or other online first brands becoming offline, becoming omnichannel, right?
Second, you are seeing a very big threat in terms of online adoption, be it via QuickCommerce, be it via e-commerce. So these are two things, you know, which are kind of hampering the growth rate as far as offline retail is concerned in the near term. And I think that is why the expansion will be a bit slow.
Govindraj Ethiraj: So if you were to aggregate all the QuickCommerce companies in these categories, let's say consumer goods, daily consumer goods, and so on, which is where they operate more in, and compare them to the large retailers, what would the split be? Wouldn't it be in the 10% or so or even less?
Karan Taurani: So QuickCommerce is very small. If you look at the QuickCommerce market, it is not even 5% of India's e-commerce market. And in terms of overall retail as a category, it will be, you know, less than 1%.
Like FMCG, for example, which is the largest category on QuickCommerce, less than 1% of sales on overall basis comes from QuickCommerce. But the point I'm trying to make is that it's not only about QuickCommerce, it's also about e-commerce, because e-commerce is usually penetrated. White goods as a category is seeing very strong offtake as far as e-commerce is concerned.
And that is where I think, you know, reliance needs to scale up. Okay. And there are many other categories like apparel, could be beauty, personal care, when they launched Dheera, but they were not able to scale up beyond the point.
So multiple category, multiple formats, they need to really do well, execute well, only then you can see results.
Govindraj Ethiraj: So they are present in brand partnerships and a lot of global brands like they've brought to India. Now, they could be Japanese brands, they could be British brands. Now, what's your sense?
I mean, where is the real value then between let's say the high-end partnerships, their own store brands, and at least if you were to look at how things have been in the last few years?
Karan Taurani: Yeah, I think the luxury market is obviously growing very well. We have seen adoption of luxury goods because of increased number of customers, you know, moving up the grade in terms of income levels wanting to spend on luxury. But as I said, the growth rates probably is going at 25-30%.
Actually, the market is going very well. But that's a fraction of the overall retail pie. So one can't really piggyback on luxury as a segment and, you know, kind of make sure that the reliance retail company grows at, you know, 10-15% kind of growth rates.
So I think luxury will continue to do well for reliance because they have a wide variety of partnerships, as you said, in terms of global brands. But, you know, one can't piggyback on that as a big growth lever for the overall business.
Govindraj Ethiraj: So if you were to look ahead now, and to the extent that reliance is also its numbers represent the state of the economy, at least as far as consumer demand goes, how are you seeing things?
Karan Taurani: I think in terms of consumer demand, as I said, I think we'll have to wait till the festive season, because I think this Q4 is not going to be anything great. If you look at Q1 as well, things are going to be quite mixed across various categories. I think we need to wait in terms of what is the future of the digital channels, where does the quick commerce category go, whether they can scale up beyond the metro markets, whether they can move from other categories except from FMCG, what about e-commerce, are they reasonably penetrated, can they deep dive further in terms of newer markets, can they grow at a faster pace, what kind of share they can have. So I think for the next six to nine months, there are two concerns, as I said, one is the digital businesses doing phenomenally well because of increased adoption, and second is the offline channel also struggling. And I think this is going to be a near-term risk for all the retail companies.
Govindraj Ethiraj: So in that sense, you're saying that the retail sector is not really looking as exciting as it may be perhaps did in the 2021-22 phase or period?
Karan Taurani: Yes, absolutely. Because I think in 2021-22, we saw a revenge consumption situation wherein consumers actually came off in large numbers, footfalls had seen strong growth, which led to store expansion as well. We had seen the biggest, highest motor store additions in that period.
And a lot of the landlords were also considering a lot of discounts at that time around. People moved to rev share as well in some of the deals. But I don't see those things sustaining now.
We don't see revenge consumption in terms of footfalls. We don't see discounts coming from the landlord side as well. Economics of stores are being tested right now.
Some stores are being shut down because of losses. So a lot of things to monitor in the near term.
Govindraj Ethiraj: Karan, thank you so much for joining me.
Karan Taurani: Thank you, Govind, as always.
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And usually when markets are down, it's a time for deals, as one has seen in several occasions in the past. So lots of them announced yesterday, including listed companies. So let me take you through a few because they're quite diverse and interesting.
Godrej Agrovet said it would buy a remaining 48% stake in Hyderabad-based Creamline Dairy Products for about 930 crores, which would obviously strengthen Godrej Agrovet's presence in the dairy sector. CDPL or Creamline Dairy operates the Godrej Jersey brand and is a large private dairy player in southern India and has a turnover of about 15,400 crores for the In healthcare, Zydus Life Sciences on Tuesday said it has entered into exclusive negotiations to acquire a majority stake in French company Amplitude Surgical for almost $280 million. The company makes high-quality lower-limb orthopaedic technologies.
And finally, Bharti Airtel has signed an agreement with SpaceX to bring Starlink satellite internet services to India, it said in a regulatory filing on Tuesday. The deal, of course, is subject to regulatory approvals for SpaceX to sell those services, that's direct internet access in the country, and others are also waiting in the wings, including Reliance and Jio. Now, this is, of course, interesting because it shows that SpaceX seems to understand one part of doing business in India challenge, which is to go via a domestic partner, which is obviously helpful and could smoothen the road somewhat.
The question now could be, will Elon Musk do the same with Tesla, where it clearly has been on a most restrained and test-the-temperature approach so far? The official release says, Airtel may offer Starlink equipment in retail stores and provide high-speed internet to businesses and bring it to rural schools, healthcare centres, and remote communities, and thus bridge the digital divide. Airtel already partners with Utilsat OneWeb for satellite broadband, and Starlink will obviously be part of that portfolio.
And before we go in this world of digital connectivity, the high-value cyber fraud jumping to nearly four times in 2024, 2023-2024, that's causing losses of about 177 crores, which obviously highlights the increasing risks of high-velocity digital financial transaction and, of course, smart scamsters. This obviously is not the whole amount because not everyone reports what they lose.
