The last hurrah

I won't hold back in my unabashed favouritism for this month. There's so much to love. Winter. Christmas movies. Mulled wine. Cold noses. Throwbacks. One final shot...at a year passing by. And suddenly, it's a whole new year.

 

Quite simply, I love December.

 

And yet, it is a month for sombre introspection, that final moment that forces us to take the plunge or let go. December, for any year, is the last hurrah. How so ever you may need it to be so. (Collectively, as an office, our Bengaluru bureau has poetically chosen this day to move to a bigger, brighter, more welcoming space.)

 

And since we've arrived at the month of throwbacks, without much ado, let's jump right into the last week's stories. We had a good bunch.

 

Our TKOW piece on Sunday had Pranav and Ashish team up to make us think about hitting that delete button on our social media accounts. "There are a lot of reasons to let go, but also enough to stay. Something you are likely to say about addiction," they write. Phew.

 

On Monday, Rohin completed the Dunzo saga. And how. The part 2 of his interview with Kabeer Biswas details many things few founders would talk about. Biswas wants Dunzo to become an invisible delivery layer for Indian cities, using which users can transact with any local business and have products delivered in about an hour or less. It's a long read, but what's a good weekend without the perfect long piece? This is the one.

 

Salman's Tuesday piece on BigBasket looked into the online grocer barrelling into the micro-delivery space with three back-to-back acquisitions in October. The potential is there, but unlocking it is a whole other matter, he writes.

 

Midweek, Arundhati looked into Google finding a safe toehold in India's sideloading game. While India’s the country with the most number of annual app downloads from Google’s Play Store, P2P file sharing from apps like SHAREit has kept Google’s visibility of tier 2 and 3 users opaque. Go on, read it; it's free.

 

Ruhi's Thursday piece documented Thyrocare's journey in India's $4 billion diagnostics market. Can Thyrocare’s commitment to affordable preventive care help it weather the storm? Read to know. 

 

The week closed with Ashish, again. This time, he wrote about new, high-profile tech appointments across Oyo (Aditya Ghosh), SoftBank (Sumer Juneja), WhatsApp (Abhijit Bose), and the soon-to-be A91 (Kaushik Anand). All executives have their task cut out. Ashish details how.

 

Before I start saying goodbyes, in case you missed our 4 PM email yesterday (do go read it), we have an exciting new series launching tomorrow—Going Home. Very much in keeping with throwbacks and nostalgia. Pretty sure you'll love it.

 

Have a fantastic weekend.