Why India still imports apples; How Magic Bus is helping rural women
If India is growing record quantities of apples, why is it importing more of them than ever? In other news, the Rural Livelihood Programme of Magic Bus India Foundation is helping women across seven states to become entrepreneurs through locally tailored livelihood programmes.
Hello,
There’s a lot of talk about sovereign AI.
IBM and Sarvam are walking the talk with a partnership to advance sovereign AI adoption. They will together help governments and regulated organisations in India deploy AI that keeps data, operations, and governance under their own control.
The partnership combines IBM’s Sovereign Core software platform with Sarvam’s India-built AI stack, which includes reasoning models and multilingual voice and language technologies trained from scratch in India.
Moving on, tech giant Apple has posted a record June quarter revenue of $109.4 billion, up 16% year on year. This is supported by double-digit growth in most emerging markets including India. But the company has also flagged business concerns in the next few quarters driven by rising memory chip prices and supply constraints.
In other news, edtech firm Imarticus Learning has acquired Singapore-based BELLS Institute of Higher Learning for Rs 800 crore. The acquisition marks Imarticus’s first international acquisition and provides its access to learners in Southeast Asia. It also establishes Singapore as the company’s hub for Southeast Asia.
Meanwhile, days after OpenAI’s rogue attack, Anthropic has revealed that some of its Claude AI models had hacked into three companies during cybersecurity tests. This incident yet again underscores the need for stronger controls and guardrails as developers struggle to contain their AI models.
In today’s newsletter, we will talk about
- Why India still imports apples
- How Magic Bus is helping rural women
- Urban Company’s Q1 results
Here’s your trivia for today: What art word is derived from the French word meaning ‘pasting’?
Economy
Why India still imports apples
If India is growing record quantities of apples, why is it importing more of them than ever? Why does so much home-grown fruit still fail to earn what it should?
For decades, India asked how to grow more apples. The bigger opportunity is to own more of the year: keep fruit sellable longer, process lower grades, and cut the import bill.
Key takeaways
- A kilo of apples can cost Rs 80 in September and Rs 220 by January, even in a year when India produces a record crop. Jammu and Kashmir, which grows roughly three-quarters of India’s apples, harvested more than 21 lakh tonnes in 2024-25. Yet India imported close to 5.6 lakh tonnes of apples during the same period, for an import bill of $418 million. The import bill has risen almost fortyfold from under $10 million 20 years ago.
- The problem is not only how much India harvests. It is also the shape of the year. India produces a flood of fresh apples for roughly four months, from the August-to-November harvest, then spends the other eight months drawing down cold stores and topping up with foreign fruit.
- The waste and the import bill are deeply connected. Both reflect India’s inability to preserve, grade, process and market enough of its crop beyond the harvest season. Call it the eight-month gap. The way to close it is not to fight the seasons–which no one can–but to break the link between when an apple is harvested and when it earns its money.
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Social impact
How Magic Bus is helping rural women
The Rural Livelihood Programme of Magic Bus India Foundation is helping women across seven states to become entrepreneurs through locally tailored livelihood programmes.
The programme teaches life skills to young people from underprivileged backgrounds. It has helped 1 million young people transition into jobs after skilling over the last 10 years.
How the programme works
- The organisation identifies economically vulnerable blocks within a district and works intensively within those communities. Each intake is screened through a selection tool that weighs social and economic marginalisation—the programme works only with BPL families—alongside a test of entrepreneurial aptitude.
- It partners with gram panchayats and local stakeholders, conducting door-to-door outreach and village meetings to enroll participants—primarily women—into its free livelihood programme.
- Each intervention is anchored by a Livelihood Resource Centre, where participants are introduced to livelihood opportunities based on local market demand. Magic Bus enables women to choose between wage employment, self-employment, and entrepreneurship.
Quarterly earnings
Urban Company slips into red
Urban Company, the digital home services platform, returned to losses in the first quarter of FY27 despite posting a 44% year-on-year increase in revenue. The company, however, described the quarter as one of its strongest performances to date.
The company reported a net loss of Rs 92.12 crore in the April-June quarter, compared with a net profit of Rs 6.94 crore in the corresponding period last year. On a sequential basis, the company narrowed its losses by 43% from Rs 161.64 crore reported in the January-March quarter of 2026.
News & updates
- Medical logistics: Air India has signed an initial pact with SkyDrive, a global eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) aircraft developer and manufacturer, and Suzuki Motor Corporation of Japan to conduct a joint feasibility study on the use of eVTOL aircraft for medical air logistics in India.
- Police case: The Hyderabad Cyber Crime police has registered two cases against some social media users and the Head of Meta in India, following a complaint by BJP activists over alleged objectionable content targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
- Vehicle probe: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the US has opened a preliminary investigation into about 1.2 million Tesla vehicles over reports of suspension failures that could cause a loss of vehicle steering control.
What art word is derived from the French word meaning ‘pasting’?
Answer: Collage
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