Celebrating Eid-al-Fitr with food; Traditional weaving with DIY kits

Hello,

The battle for iPhone manufacturing.

Apple Inc is increasingly looking to diversify its supply chain beyond China—the largest iPhone-making hub in the world—with India emerging as its new hub. 

According to Bloomberg News, Apple assembled $14 billion worth of iPhones in India in fiscal 2024—as much as 14% or about 1 in 7 of its marquee devices. 

Foxconn assembled nearly 67% while Pegatron Corp made about 17% of the India-made iPhones. Wistron Corp's plant in Karnataka, which the Tata Group took over last year, made the remaining.

In other news, Mumbai AI startup Neysa raised $20 million in a seed funding round led by Matrix Partners India, Nexus Venture Partners, Menlo Park, and California-based NTTVC.

Also, the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund bought a majority stake in digital infrastructure company iBus Network and Infrastructure for $200 million to support its growth.

Meanwhile, a new study has found that the highly adaptable octopuses could lose vision and struggle to survive due to heat stress by the end of the century if ocean temperatures continue to rise at the projected rate.

Lastly, why do we die? This Nobel Award-winning scientist explains. 

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Celebrating Eid-al-Fitr with food
• Cornerstone Ventures launches fund
• Traditional weaving with DIY kits

Here’s your trivia for today: When was the wreck of the RMS Titanic discovered?

Wine and Food

Celebrating Eid-al-Fitr with food

Whether it’s the iftar (the fast-breaking evening meal) during Ramadan or the lavish spread whipped up to culminate the end of the fasting month, on Eid-al-Fitr (also known as Meethi Eid)—every Muslim household has its unique family recipe for celebration. 

As we celebrate Eid-al-Fitr, we take a look at some of the celebratory dishes that are part of Muslim households across India.

Nosh on:

• Every Eid has its own religious and cultural significance. Meethi Eid, as the name signifies, encourages Muslims to start the day with something sweet. 
• Chef and author Taiyaba Ali, who belongs to Lucknow, remembers her family starting their day with seviyan made in milk, a sweet dish starkly different from sheer khurma. 
• In South India, Muslims often indulge in jaalar vada (lattice patterned pancakes), and wattalapam, a coconut custard pudding. 

Investor

Cornerstone Ventures launches fund

Mumbai-based VC firm Cornerstone Ventures launched its second fund with a corpus of $200 million to invest in B2B enterprise-tech startups. The VC firm is looking to invest $5 million to $15 million in a mix of early-growth-stage and scaled startups from the fund.

Key takeaways:

• Cornerstone Ventures's second fund will focus on backing up-and-coming B2B tech prospects in finance, retail, healthcare, distribution and supply chain, consumer goods, and ecommerce sectors.
• The VC firm's first fund, launched in mid-2019, invested $50 million across 21 companies, mostly focused on B2B enterprise SaaS.
• Cornerstone Venture's portfolio companies include Dealhub, Gravitas.io, DBMaestro, and Squaretalk.

Women entrepreneur

Traditional weaving with DIY kits

Kalaiyarasi Ramachandran started Raatai after she found that traditional handloom weaving had taken a hit in her village. Hailing from a weaver community, she discovered that the number of handlooms in her village had dwindled from 7,500 to 2,500. 

Raatai offers DIY handloom kits that can be used by children and adults.

Saving crafts:

• Raatai’s WeaveMate comes with a loom frame and a minimum quantity of naturally dyed yarn. It can be used to make small wallets, purses, wall hangings, and pouches. 
• Its WeaveAlly, another product, can be used to make handbags, stoles, and slightly bigger products. Its third offering, WeaveFit, is customisable and can be used to even weave dhotis and sarees.
• The portable looms come with a user manual and a QR code that takes the user to a YouTube video on how to assemble and use the loom. 

News & updates

• Downgrade: Credit rating agency Fitch cut its outlook on China's sovereign credit rating to negative, citing risks to public finances as the economy faces increasing uncertainty in its shift to new growth models. The outlook downgrade follows a similar move by Moody's in December. 
• Correction: Chipmaking giant Nvidia has entered “correction territory,” with its shares now down 10% from its most recent all-time closing high of more than $950 apiece. The company, which makes GPUs, has been a key beneficiary of the AI boom, which boosted demand for its chips.
• Warnings: The IMF said that aggressive use of industrial policy by the world’s most powerful economies risks becoming an expensive mistake that could trigger a tit-for-tat subsidy war. It added attempts to increase innovation only worked under certain limited conditions and were not a “magic cure” for slow growth.

When was the wreck of the RMS Titanic discovered?

Answer: September 1, 1985. 

Robert Ballard led the American-French expedition that finally located the wreckage, some 13 nautical miles from the position given in the distress signals. The first items found were the ship’s giant boilers.

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