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  • Raising the Bar

    Back in the 2020s, Rahul Mehra was often met with disinterest when introducing his craft gin in an already-saturated UK market. But the minute he told bartenders and restaurant owners that it was made in India, with Indian botanicals, their ears would prick up. “There was always a follow-up question though. Are you sure this is made in India and not elsewhere?” remembers Mehra, co-founder of the Goa-based Third Eye Distillery. It’s the parent company of Stranger & Sons, a craft gin celebrated for blending juniper with nine Indian botanicals such as Gondhoraj lemons, black pepper, mace, and coriander. 

    Cut to 2026, Stranger & Sons is now available in about 20 international markets, including the UK, Australia, Italy, Singapore, UAE and Thailand. They also launched in the US three months ago, with their export revenue rising from 5% in 2020 to 25% of the total revenue today. 

    Other Indian craft gins such as Jaisalmer Indian Craft Gin, Hapusa Himalayan Dry Gin, Jin JiJi, among others, are also starting to find favor in global markets. Jigger & Pony, Atlas and The Bar Square in Singapore, bars at The Savoy and The Connaught luxury hotels in the UK, the Gin Run in Thailand all stock Indian craft gins. 

    What is driving their success? Indigenous botanicals, excellent craftsmanship, good storytelling and placement of the gin in discerning markets. 

     

    Anand Virmani, co-founder of Nao Spirits & Beverages. Credit – Nao Spirits & Beverages

     

    Even a decade ago, the gin market in India was lacklustre. Today, these craft gins have made a significant mark not just within India but also in the global market. “That’s quite commendable, especially because India was not known to produce quality liquor, with the exception of some whiskies,” says Rehan Guha, a chef and F&B entrepreneur who runs Oxymorons, a 30-seater craft cocktail bar in Hyderabad.

     

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    Even a decade ago, the gin market in India was lacklustre. Today, these craft gins have made a significant mark not just within India but also in the global market.
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    The greatest appeal of these gins comes from the local botanicals they are infused with i.e. cardamom, Palash flowers, Khasi mandarin and pine-smoked tea, for example. “The international appeal of these gins is largely driven by ‘brand India’, which is globally recognized for agriculture, spice trade and botanical diversity,” explains Mehra. 

    “The botanicals also lend the spirits their distinct flavour”, says Yangdup Lama. Lama is one of India’s finest mixologists, often travelling the world for his work. These gins (and the cocktails that use them) feel brighter, more aromatic and often more spice-forward than classic London Dry expressions, giving them a unique identity globally. 

    “For instance, in the United Kingdom, which is already crowded with similar-tasting gins from the country, it is the novelty of our craft gin that distinguishes us from the others,” says Anand Virmani, co-founder of Nao Spirits & Beverages, and widely regarded as making the first Indian craft gin in 2017. Their Hapusa, a sipping gin, has locally-foraged Himalayan juniper berries, Gondhoraj lime, turmeric, mango and ginger.

    These brewers, however, didn’t target the diaspora, conventionally thought of as an easy entry point, nor the supermarket shelf space. They went straight for premium cocktail bars, Michelin-starred restaurants, luxury hotels and specialist spirit retailers, adds Guha. 

    “Indian spirits are succeeding through advocacy,” he explains. At these bars and restaurants, bartenders play a crucial role in explaining what makes these spirits distinctive, encouraging customers to pay for a more elevated drinking experience.

     

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    At these bars and restaurants, bartenders play a crucial role in explaining what makes these spirits distinctive, encouraging customers to pay for a more elevated drinking experience.
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    The gin houses also learnt crucial lessons from their predecessors. When Karan Bilimoria launched Cobra beer in the UK in 1989, he successfully chose curry houses for distributing his beer. “But he also became pigeonholed by that association. We didn’t want that,” explains Virmani. 

    Jin Jiji craft gin was first launched in the US in 2019. It was then launched in the UK, Australia, Singapore and 13 other foreign markets before coming to India in 2023. It’s distilled with foraged Himalayan juniper, Darjeeling tea and tulsi leaves in the small town of Kashipur in Uttarakhand.

     

     

     

    The spirit comes in a sleek, tall bottle that has the Devnagiri script and motifs inspired by Indian design. Superior packaging has also helped craft gins make a mark in the international market, says Guha. 

    Stranger & Sons has a jungle-inspired illustrated label that illustrates its nine botanicals. When consumers finish the bottle, the scene on the front is mirrored on the inside of the back label. Hapusa is made of blue-black glass with a squat taper neck, mimicking the snowline of the Himalayas.

    As the global gin market grows, the category may prove to be a pathfinder for other Indian alcohol. Rum, feni and vodka producers are already walking down the same path. If they succeed, India could become known not just as a producer of whisky, but as one of the world’s most distinctive sources of premium spirits.

  • The Scent of Home

  • Party of One

    One of life’s greatest pleasures? Going to a new restaurant, ordering a glass of Sauvignon Blanc, and a perfectly-poached, butter-fleshed fish cloaked with a citrus sauce. Maybe it comes with a crisp green salad studded with brash tomatoes, ripe with juice. After, perhaps, you order a lemon tart, fresh and bright and zingy. But the best part? The best part is enjoying the meal alone, giving it the attention it deserves, not sharing it, not muddying the meal with inane chit-chatter. 

    Yet for all its pleasures, dining alone remains a surprisingly radical act in much of the world, and perhaps nowhere more so than in India.

     

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    For a country built around the conviviality of the shared meal (think of the Bohri thaal, where families and friends eat out of the same thali), solo diners have long been seen as the exception rather than the norm.

    There was always a gendered dimension to this. A man eating alone at a restaurant was often seen as professional and independent. A woman dining by herself, meanwhile, was more likely to attract curiosity or suspicion. The assumption was that public leisure belonged to groups, couples, or families — not to a woman occupying a table alone.

    That assumption is slowly loosening its grip, and several forces are driving the change.

    Perhaps the biggest driving force is the rise of remote and freelance work. The pandemic knuckled people out of their offices and into cafés and co-working spaces — this helped normalize solo diners, busy with their laptops and phones and Airpods.  

    Social media has also helped reframe solo dining as a form of self-care and an intentional lifestyle choice rather than an awkward necessity. Instagram is filled with carefully-composed images of a lone wine glass beside a beautifully plated meal, turning solitude into something aspirational.

     

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    Instagram is filled with carefully-composed images of a lone wine glass beside a beautifully plated meal, turning solitude into something aspirational.
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    Layered on top of this is a broader cultural move towards individualism. Millennials and Gen Z are generally more comfortable prioritizing personal preference over group consensus than previous generations. For them, dining alone can be as empowering and relaxing as a yoga class or a slow walk in the park.

    Of course, working-class women in India never really needed permission to eat alone in public. Any railway platform, street-food stall, or bus depot tells that story. Women have long grabbed an omelette pao, a plate of pao bhaji, a quick snack before or after shifts. Solo dining itself is not new. What is changing is who gets to do it without attracting attention, and in what kinds of spaces.

     

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    India’s moment mirrors similar developments around the world. In the United States, solo dining reservations have risen steeply by nearly 30% over the past two years. The United Kingdom has recorded similar growth, particularly in cities such as London and Manchester. In Australia, solo reservations increased by 12% in the past year alone, with solo diners spending an average of AUD 94 per meal — roughly 36% more than diners eating in groups.

    Restaurants, however, have been somewhat slower to adapt. Most dining rooms in India are still organized around couples or larger groups. Tables for two dominate the floor plan, while the solo guest is often eyed askance; not unwelcome, simply an afterthought.

    That may be starting to change. Business owners are beginning to realize that solo diners are easier to accommodate, turn tables more quickly, and, according to certain industry surveys, often spend more per person than group diners. In response, some cafés and restaurants in India and abroad are experimenting with single-seat counters, bar seating, and communal tables that make dining alone feel less like an exception and more like a recognized and respected customer category.

    The real question is no longer whether solo diners will find a seat. It is whether the hospitality industry will evolve quickly enough to welcome them.

    Because solo dining is not a passing trend. For a growing number of Indians — and especially for women — eating alone is no longer a backup plan reserved for cancelled arrangements or busy schedules. It is a choice. And increasingly, it is the first one they make.

  • The Age of the Pet Parent

    A pet-friendly resort advertising gourmet canine menus. A bakery preparing breed-specific birthday cakes. A young couple planning their weekend around daycare timings for their cat.

    Twenty years ago, these scenes would have seemed extraordinary in India. Today, they are entirely commonplace.

    India’s pet-care market has more than doubled in value since 2019, touching roughly $3.6 billion in 2024. But the numbers only reveal one part of the story. Pets are no longer dismissed as mere animals — they are increasingly treated as family members and, in many households, surrogate children.

    This is an enormous turn of events for a country in which pets played a very limited role. Dogs were seen as guardians of the gate, cats were useful as rat catchers, and that was that.

    Contemporary urban India could not look more different. The country’s pet population has grown from around 26 million animals in 2019 to more than 32 million in 2024. Pet ownership remains low compared with Western markets, but its character has changed dramatically: pets now travel with their family, are stars of family photographs, are often the family password (as the popular Instagram meme goes), eat special diets, and curl up in bed beside their family members every night. 

    Much of this is linked to broader demographic change — later marriages, fewer or no children as part of a DINK (dual income no kids) household and perhaps higher salaries. Pets often fill emotional roles once held by traditional family structures. This has given rise to the DINKWAD household (double income, no kids, with a dog) and a new kind of consumer: financially secure, time-poor, and deeply invested in their pet’s wellbeing.

    We know that the foundations of India’s pet boom predate Covid-19, but the pandemic accelerated it sharply. Lockdowns confined millions to their homes, cut off from social networks and navigating prolonged uncertainty. Companion animals offered structure and emotional support through the disruption, and adoption rates rose sharply across urban India, often turning casual ownership into familial bonds.

    As lockdowns ended, those behaviors largely continued — translating into higher spending on nutrition, healthcare, travel and lifestyle services. What began as a response to an extraordinary moment became a lasting shift in consumer behavior.

     

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    Pet food remains the largest category, but basic kibble is giving way to premium nutrition, specialized diets and functional wellness products, as owners scrutinize ingredient lists and health outcomes as much as they do for their own diets.
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    Spending patterns show the transformation most clearly. Pet food remains the largest category, with basic kibble giving way to premium nutrition, specialized diets and functional wellness products, as owners scrutinize ingredient lists and health outcomes as much as they do for their own diets. 

    But the shift extends well beyond food. Grooming, once an occasional luxury, is becoming routine, with pet spas spreading across major cities. As a result, some dogs are better groomed than their humans! Preventive healthcare is expanding, and pet insurance — still nascent in India — is attracting interest as vet costs rise. Even celebrations have become commercial, with pet bakeries selling birthday cakes and festivals catering exclusively to companion animals. 

    India’s pet industry has moved through distinct phases: first products (food, accessories, retail), then digital commerce, which broadened access and brought pet care into the mainstream.

     

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    A third phase is now emerging, focused less on what owners buy and more on how they care for their pets. Grooming, daycare, boarding, training and veterinary services are among the fastest-growing segments, reflecting a new reality: owners are willing to spend, but constrained by time. The challenge is no longer finding food or toys — it’s finding trusted caregivers. The industry’s centre of gravity is shifting from one-off transactions toward ongoing relationships built on trust.

    Perhaps the strongest validation comes from outside the pet industry itself. Some of India’s largest consumer companies have entered the category in recent years. FMCG groups are investing in pet nutrition, global corporations expanding via acquisitions, and domestic conglomerates launching dedicated pet-care brands. Major players in the pet industry are ramping up their efforts to enter the space. Nestlé purchased the Indian pet-food company Purina Petcare. Meanwhile, Emami, an Indian consumer-goods conglomerate, has introduced Ayurvedic pet medicines. According to market-research firm Euromonitor International, India’s pet-food sector currently holds a value of $480 million and is projected to expand to $1.2 billion by 2025. 

    Pets are now regularly covered by national newspapers, television and digital publications, with pet-focused startups increasingly appearing on business competition shows, reaching audiences well beyond traditional pet-owner circles. Advertising tells a similar story: brands with no connection to the pet industry — telecom companies, banks, e-commerce platforms — now feature pets regularly, because they evoke trust, warmth and family. 

    Urban infrastructure is beginning to catch up with changing attitudes. Pet-friendly cafés, resorts and hotels are increasingly common, and dedicated pet events and adoption fairs now draw large crowds. Workplaces are adapting too — several companies have introduced pet-friendly policies, including bereavement leave for employees mourning the loss of an animal companion, a perk that would once have seemed entirely eccentric. 

    The digital economy has amplified all of this. Pet accounts are a thriving category on Instagram and YouTube, often out-engaging traditional influencers, with thousands of Indian pet creators documenting daily routines, training journeys and travel. Multiple travel accounts now point the way to pet-friendly restaurants and hotels (a swelling number).

     

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    Pet accounts are a thriving category on Instagram and YouTube, often out-engaging traditional influencers, with thousands of Indian pet creators documenting daily routines, training journeys and travel — a mirror of changing lifestyles and a valuable channel for brands.
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    The growth story isn’t without complications. India remains home to one of the world’s largest populations of free-roaming indie dogs, and the contrast between premium pet spas and underfunded animal welfare systems raises real questions about inequality and responsibility. 

    Pet ownership itself is concentrated in urban, affluent households, with access to quality healthcare and services still uneven across the country. Infrastructure lags too, and despite rising adoption rates, pedigree breeds are still far higher in demand. 

     

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    The easiest way to understand India’s pet-care industry is through market forecasts — a $3.6 billion sector that could double again within a few years. But the more significant story lies beyond the numbers.

    Pet care is not merely a larger consumer market, but a new cultural reality — one in which companion animals are treated not as possessions, but as members of the household. And as that idea spreads, the future of India’s pet industry will be shaped less by products on shelves than by the changing relationships between people and the animals they choose to bring into their lives.

  • Returning to Our Roots

    Away from the bedlam of Mumbai’s trafficked streets lies a tiny pocket of peace. This is the Edenic Aarey Forest, buffer to the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, and home to a variety of wildlife and a rich mosaic of independent indigenous groups. These ethnic minorities are amongst Mumbai’s first residents; the city grew itself around them. But up until now, they have largely been written out of the annals of the city’s history.

    Some heritage groups are working to change that. GoHalluHallu (the name translates to ‘walk softly’, in Marathi) is handing all the power back to the city’s tribal residents — fossicking through the forest for foraged produce with Vanitatai, a forest resident; learning the ways of traditional Warli art with Dinesh.

    Meanwhile, within the teal forests of Uttarakhand, Village Ways, a social initiative, have empowered the local people of the land to set up their own homestays and trekking operations.

    But let’s shift the narrative further afield.

    Steam rises from a geothermal valley in Rotorua just after sunrise. The air smells faintly of minerals. A Māori guide stands at the edge of a pool that has been bubbling for longer than any recorded history. He doesn’t point to the steam or recount a legend on demand. He begins with something simpler — the name of the valley, the river it connects to, the lineage it carries, the responsibility it asks of people who walk through it. Before you realise it, the landscape is no longer scenery. It is a teacher.

    What is happening in all these places is slow but inevitable. Around the world, Indigenous communities are beginning to decide how visitors encounter their land, their stories, and their knowledge. Travel used to mediate those things through brochures, guidebooks, and outsiders’ interpretations. Now, in more places each year, communities are setting the terms themselves. 

     

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    Over the past decade, Indigenous-led tourism has gained ground in places as varied as the Arctic, Aotearoa New Zealand, Canada, the Amazon, and communities across Asia and the Pacific. While each story is shaped by its own history, culture, and landscape, they are all twined together by a common thread: local communities are taking the lead in deciding how their homelands, traditions, and knowledge are presented to visitors.

    Consider the Sámi in northern Scandinavia. Their tours are often small by design. A herder might explain how reindeer behaviour signals seasonal change or how migration routes have shifted with warming temperatures. The focus is on reading the land, not entertaining visitors. In Canada, some First Nations groups, such as the Takaya Group, run canoe journeys and cultural stays that fund language revitalization or community programs. 

    In the Amazon, certain river routes are now managed by the tribes who have always lived along them. Visitors learn why parts of the forest must stay untouched, or why certain trees matter more for the long-term health of the ecosystem than they do for photography.

     

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    Mainstream tourism often moves quickly. It repeats the same script from Bali to Barcelona: highlights, photo points, curated authenticity
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    Three forces conspired to bring this about. The first was climatic: as the climate crisis looms larger, knowledge accumulated over centuries of close observation has acquired a new market value, one that models and satellites cannot easily replicate. The second was a shift in what travelers actually want. Global tourism has produced a strong backlash: visitors are hungry for something that feels, however loosely defined, ‘authentic’. The third owed less to consumer taste than to law and politics. Decades of litigation, treaty negotiation and activism have handed many Indigenous communities greater control over their own land and the stories told about it. Tourism became one of the few spaces where these threads could meet. Not as an extraction, but as an exchange.

    Indigenous-led travel asks visitors to slow down. It asks them to learn something about how a place thinks. It shifts the focus from “what can I see here?” to “what responsibilities does this landscape carry, and how did people learn them over centuries?”

    This isn’t a romantic return to tradition. It is a different way of being a guest. When a Sámi guide explains weather patterns or a Māori guide traces whakapapa through a valley, the knowledge is not being performed. It is being offered with context and care. The traveller becomes part of a conversation rather than a spectator.

     

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    Mainstream tourism often moves quickly. It repeats the same script from Bali to Barcelona: highlights, photo points, curated authenticity. Even sustainability programs frequently centre convenience for visitors.

    Indigenous-led travel moves differently. It listens first. It builds around consent, not access. It emphasises land over itinerary. And because communities decide what can be shared and what stays within, the boundary between public and sacred remains intact.

     

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    In the last decade, Indigenous-led travel has become more visible across regions that rarely appear in the same story: the Arctic, Aotearoa New Zealand, parts of Canada, the Amazon, and communities across Asia and the Pacific.
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    In Canada, the federal government has established an Indigenous Tourism Destination Fund, arguing that Indigenous tourism advances both economic development and reconciliation. Recent investments have focused on Indigenous-owned visitor experiences and community-led tourism enterprises 

    The numbers add up too. The New Zealand Government recently reported that Māori tourism businesses contributed NZ$1.2 billion to the economy in 2023, up from NZ$975 million in 2018. There were 3,595 Māori tourism businesses, employing more than 15,000 people.

    The rise of Indigenous-led travel is part of a larger rebalancing in global culture. The world is beginning to understand that land is not neutral. It holds memory, responsibility, and history. And the people best positioned to interpret it are the communities that have never forgotten these things.

    Travel is changing because travelers are changing. Many want context, not just access. Continuity, not just novelty. Encounters that feel grounded in care rather than consumption. Indigenous communities are offering that, but on their own terms.

    As climate change accelerates and questions of belonging, identity, and land rights become more urgent, this form of travel may become one of the clearest ways the world learns from Indigenous knowledge rather than merely visiting it. The future of travel may not be defined by new destinations, but by who we allow to guide us through the places we think we already know.

    If tourism is a global conversation, this is the moment the microphone shifts.

  • How Soft Games Became a New Form of Emotional Ritual

    At first glance, it looks simple: you’re fishing off a quiet dock, decorating a tiny cottage, planting pumpkins that will bloom tomorrow. There’s no timer ticking, no leaderboard to climb. Yet millions of people log into worlds like Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, and Cozy Grove every single day.

    What began as a niche pastime has quietly become one of gaming’s biggest cultural shifts. The genre now has a name — cozy gaming, and a following that cuts across age and gender. In one informal survey of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, out of 700 players, 92% of them said they played every day, describing it as a small ritual that helped give their days shape when everything else felt uncertain. Across the U.S., the gender balance in gaming is now nearly even with 46% of players being women. Yet the public perception of gaming still skews male, largely because mobile and cozy games, where women form a quiet majority have rarely been recognized as their own thriving subculture.

    Cozy games sit at that intersection: calm, creative, and quietly universal, attracting players who aren’t chasing victory but a soothing sense of rhythm. Unlike traditional titles built around progress and performance, these games are built around care. You fish, you decorate, you cook, you water plants. You tend to small digital worlds that grow on their own time. 

     

    Animal Crossing is amongst the most popular cozy games today

     

    That manageable calm has made cozy gaming more than just entertainment. It’s become an emotional ritual for a generation navigating burnout, climate dread, and economic uncertainty. An example? That elusive millennial dream, running your own bookshop, can finally be achieved without all the heartbreak of actual bookkeeping. “Stock your tiny bookshop with different books and items, set up shop in scenic locations, and run your cosy second-hand bookshop while getting to know the locals,” explains the website for Tiny Bookshop. How to resist?

    Besides, the pandemic rocketed rents for a swathe of younger people, nudging them to move in with their families; is it any wonder that they are turning to virtual homes, setting them up exactly as they wish? In Homescapes, for instance, you play as Austin the butler, the most benign of any online character, as he slowly furnishes his wealthy family’s mansion. Not only does this offer a level of control that users might not possess in reality, it’s also (let’s be honest) far easier to paint a virtual wall than wallpaper a real one.

     

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    Unlike traditional titles built around progress and performance, these games are built around care. You fish, you decorate, you cook, you water plants.
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    But this isn’t just about soothing stress, it’s much bigger than that. Cozy gaming harks back to a much older lineage of ‘healing’ practices, from Japanese iyashikei anime to bonsai tending and miniature-making. The screen may have changed, but the impulse stays the same: to bring order to an unruly universe, to nurture something.

    This shift is also reshaping the very definition of who a gamer supposedly is. Men are just as drawn to the quiet collectability of Cozy Grove or Unpacking as women are to the meditative loops of Stardew Valley. These games don’t make you lose points for slowing down. Instead, they reward you for it.

     

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    Online communities have found cozy titles to be a more expressive place, like ‘The Gaymers’, a queer-led collective within gaming culture. It is in these pastel, low-stakes worlds that players can experiment with fashion, design, and even gender expression, exploring sides of themselves they might not be able to reveal offline. Besides, those with disabilities might find the gentler pacing of such games more forgiving.

    The numbers echo the cultural mood. Mobile gaming now makes up nearly half of global gaming revenue — about $92 billion in 2024. And this particular genre is worth an estimated $973 million, and projected to grow 6.5% annually through 2032.

    Still, the best way to understand cozy gaming isn’t through market reports but through ritual. Every game in this genre revolves around small acts of repetition: you unpack, you tidy, you clean, you slice. Over time, those loops form a steady rhythm that real life lacks. These games offer predictability within progress, and permission to rest when needed.

    In a culture that constantly gamifies productivity — tracking steps, sleep, and work — cozy gaming flips the script. It’s gaming without the grind. It’s digital space as an emotional space. In that sense, the rise of soft games isn’t about escape; it’s about recalibration.

  • Sister Act

    Mumbai and New York sit on opposite sides of the planet, but both are technicolor cities, pulsing with life and dreams. 

    Like Mumbai, New York City is choked with cars and crowds, with hopeful-eyed travelers arriving bag in hand, hungering for the stars. Both cities don’t sleep. And perhaps most crucially, at their hearts, both cities are also marked by their diversity and cosmopolitanism, both moulded by the immigrants who now call the land their home.

    And like Mumbai, New York City owes its existence to something far less romantic  — both were bargaining chips in deals made by the British empire.

    Bombay fell into English hands around 1661, thanks to a bizarre marriage settlement; the city was part of the dowry of Portugal’s Princess Catherine of Braganza when she wed England’s Charles II (the man scarcely even knew where the city was). The East India Company eventually took them over, built up ports and institutions, opened the city up to immigrants around the world, and wove English into the city’s governance and commerce. Centuries on, Mumbai still holds that cosmopolitanism to its heart (a few rocky moments notwithstanding).

     

     

    New York’s origin was an even more transactional exchange. In 1667, England and the Dutch Republic signed the Treaty of Breda, and the Dutch walked away from New Amsterdam — then a modest trading settlement on Manhattan — in return for Run Island in present-day Indonesia, at the time the world’s only source of nutmeg. The English rebranded the settlement New York, and English took over from Dutch as the language spoken in courts, markets, and boardrooms.

    Nobody sitting at either negotiating table could have guessed that these two acquisitions would grow into the stately monarchs that they are today. And yet that’s exactly what happened. Mumbai and New York City both grew into fabled entrepots of commerce, and early adopters of ‘globalization’, well before the term gained currency in the contemporary world.

     

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    No wonder that both cities live curiously similar (yet rather dissonant) rhythms. Every morning, young Bandra professionals march their laptops into yet another cafe serving the latest artisanal coffee. At Churchgate railway station, a clot of commuters hustle in and out, streaming into waiting buses and black-and-yellow taxis. Just outside the city’s stately Gothic and Art Deco structures sit the street stalls, dispensing everything from sliced watermelon to sugarcane juice. For those without time to tarry and money to spare, the street vendors of the city have always held court.

     

     

    Half a world away, in New York, the city is heading to bagel shops or grabbing its first matcha latte before the day fully dawns. Instead of local trains, New Yorkers pack into the MTA, earbuds in, sharpening their wits for the day.

    By lunchtime, the contrasts sharpen. In Mumbai, the dabbawalas orchestrate a seamless ballet of home-cooked meals delivered straight to office desks, while co-workers congregate at the lunch table, trying each others’ lunches, and clucking and chattering about their day. In New York, the lunches feel different: a pastrami sandwich from Katz’s Deli, a hurried bowl of salad from Chopt, a rushed bite at a food truck, a sad desk lunch.

     

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    In New York City, the slate winters, smooth with ice, the Rockefeller Christmas tree hung about with lights, and girdled by gawping admirers.
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    And then as the gloaming turns to nightfall, in New York, coffee dates turn to jazz nights, cocktail glasses clink and the Brooklyn Bridge lights up like a necklace. Back in Mumbai, the city’s Irani cafes brim with customers sipping their chai, Marine Drive glows golden in the sunset, a stream of Punjabi pop briefly pierces the evening air thanks to a passing taxi.

    Both cities are defined by their weather. In Mumbai, the gusting monsoon, rain-slicked streets, the wind sending a great pane of water over the city, the jackhammer relentlessness of a steady rainy day. In New York City, the slate winters, smooth with ice, the Rockefeller Christmas tree hung about with lights, and girdled by gawping admirers.

    Mumbai and New York — both queens in their own spheres, both throbbing with life and energy, both holders of dreams. Different skins, same restless soul. Both cities forget how to be still — they hum through midnight, roar through morning, and wear their exhaustion like a second skin, beautiful and unrelenting.

  • What’s Up with Whatsapp Pay?

    Before Meta handed WhatsApp to Kunal Shah, it spent years trying to decode a puzzle in one of its most crucial markets.

    India has WhatsApp’s largest user base. More than 500 million Indians use the app to coordinate family gatherings, organize weddings, negotiate business deals, share homework assignments, forward political opinions and maintain social ties across cities and continents. In many parts of the country, WhatsApp is less a messaging platform than a layer of digital infrastructure woven into everyday life.

    So when WhatsApp Pay officially launched in India in November 2020, it seemed poised for market domination.

    The logic was straightforward. If people were already spending hours a day on WhatsApp, why would they leave the app to make payments? The future appeared obvious: messaging and commercial transactions would converge in a single interface. India, with its booming digital economy and rapidly growing adoption of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), seemed like a market ripe for picking.

    Instead, WhatsApp Pay became one of the most surprising disappointments in India’s fintech story. Years later, the service remains a marginal player. While UPI transactions have exploded into the billions each month, WhatsApp Pay has captured only a tiny fraction of the market. PhonePe and Google Pay dominate the landscape. 

    The failure offers a revealing lesson about technology, trust and consumer behaviour. It also helps explain why Meta’s recent decision to appoint CRED founder Kunal Shah to lead WhatsApp could prove far more significant than a routine executive reshuffle.

     

     

    At first glance, WhatsApp Pay’s struggles seem counterintuitive. Technology companies often assume that distribution is the hardest problem to solve. WhatsApp already had distribution on a scale most startups could only dream of. Hundreds of millions of Indians opened the app multiple times a day. But perhaps that was part of the problem. 

    In India, the most successful financial products tend to create a sense of formality. Whether it is a traditional bank branch, an ATM receipt or a digital payment app, users want cues that signal seriousness and security. PhonePe and Google Pay built interfaces around those expectations. 

    WhatsApp, on the other hand, was designed for conversation rather than commerce. The same chat window used to send jokes, family photographs and voice notes suddenly became a place where users were expected to transfer money. Paradoxically, WhatsApp’s greatest strength — its intimacy — became its greatest weakness. 

    Timing did not help.

    Around the same period that WhatsApp Pay was being tested and rolled out, India became consumed by the media frenzy surrounding the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput. Television channels repeatedly broadcast leaked WhatsApp conversations connected to individuals involved in the case, turning private chats into public spectacle.

     

    Image credit: www.pexels.com

     

    Of course, there is no evidence that the controversy directly harmed WhatsApp Pay. But trust is rarely shaped by a single event. At a moment when Meta wanted users to view WhatsApp as a secure financial platform, many Indians were watching private messages become national headlines.

    Then there was the issue of friction.

    Conventional Silicon Valley wisdom holds that reducing friction is always desirable. Yet behavioural psychology suggests otherwise. Financial products often benefit from small rituals that reinforce trust. Authentication screens, PIN confirmations and transaction alerts may appear mundane and even annoying, but they reassure users that their money is being handled carefully. WhatsApp Pay attempted to make payments feel seamless. Paradoxically, sending money started to feel almost too easy.

    Meanwhile, competitors were aggressively rewarding users for changing habits. Cashback offers, scratch cards and merchant partnerships transformed routine transactions into miniature games. Google Pay and PhonePe invested heavily in these incentives. WhatsApp Pay largely did not.

    That is where Kunal Shah enters the story.

    Until recently, Shah was best known within India’s startup ecosystem. His entrepreneurial journey began with FreeCharge, the mobile recharge platform he co-founded in 2010, but grew to become an expert on consumer behaviour, incentives and trust. This would eventually shape CRED, the fintech company he founded in 2018.

    On paper, CRED’s premise appeared unusual. The platform initially focused on rewarding users for paying credit-card bills on time. Yet CRED was never really about bill payments. It was an experiment in behavioural design. Shah understood that financial decisions are often driven by emotion as much as utility, and transformed routine financial behaviour into something aspirational. 

    Whether one loves or hates CRED, the company demonstrated something important: Shah had an unusual ability to understand how people form habits and assign meaning to products. Those skills may be exactly what WhatsApp needs.

     

    Image credit: www.pexels.com

     

    Meta’s appointment of Shah comes as the company seeks to transform WhatsApp into something larger than a messaging platform.  Meta has not publicly detailed why it chose him for the role. In announcing the appointment, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg praised Shah’s ‘builder mentality’ and ‘global perspective’. Kunal Shah’s appointment suggests Meta finally understands that the next stage of WhatsApp’s evolution may not be a technological problem at all. It may be a behavioural one.

     

    “
    Meta's appointment of Shah comes as the company seeks to transform WhatsApp into something larger than a messaging platform.
    ”

     

     

    Years after WhatsApp Pay’s disappointing debut in India, Meta appears to be betting that the man who built a career decoding incentives and human psychology can succeed where product features alone could not.

    WhatsApp remains India’s digital drawing room. Whether it can become India’s wallet is still an open question. For the first time in years, however, Meta seems to have hired someone whose entire career has been spent studying exactly that problem.

  • The Mottled Dawn

  • More Than a Photo Op

    We’re seeing them everywhere. Videos and photographs of Christopher Nolan, Matt Damon, and Timothée Chalamet dressed up in suits, and having cutting chai and bun maska in Mumbai’s iconic Olympia Coffee House. 

    This was no casual chai stop. Instead, it was a pre-planned part of the publicity for the freshly-released film Odyssey. Universal Pictures India shared the moment on their Instagram page, captioning it “Quick tea stop before ‘The Odyssey’ Mumbai Premiere. A big night awaits, but chai comes first.” This, predictably enough, went viral in Mumbai. Even just a decade ago, such Hollywood promotions in India were rare. Is this a sign of the changing times? 

    But before you make up your mind, let’s review all the evidence. The incontrovertible fact is that there has been a sudden rocketing in South Asian representation across the entertainment board. That’s why we suddenly see Alia Bhatt posing on the red carpet in Cannes; Maitreyi Ramakrishnan (of the Netflix show Never Have I Ever) cast in the Legally Blonde prequel Elle, and Sarita Choudhury cast as Carrie’s best friend in And Just Like That, the Sex and the City sequel. 

    And here’s another piece of evidence: a whole host of streaming platforms – Amazon Prime, Netflix, Disney-Hotstar and SonyLIV – are giving away free memberships in India via Airtel.

    So does this mean that India is now being recognised as a significant theatrical market? Does India now wield soft power that it never had before? Or is it all just tokenism for views and clicks?

     

    “
    The incontrovertible fact is that there has been a sudden rocketing in South Asian representation across the entertainment board.
    ”

     

    India’s presence in Hollywood films has rarely gone beyond a supporting role. There are exceptions of course, Priyanka Chopra being the biggest one. Bridgerton (Season 2, 2022) introduced the Sharma sisters, a rare moment where South Asian characters were given central roles in a period drama. Kumail Nanjiani has been nominated for everything from an Academy Award and Golden Globe Award, to the Emmy Awards. But by and large, India and Indians existed as colorful caricature or as a sidekick. 

     

     

    If you reduce a culture to backdrop often enough, its own people may start seeing it as something to outgrow rather than embrace. This shaped more than outsiders’ perceptions of us — it began to shape our own.

    On the other hand, Hollywood has always absorbed and sought out whatever cultures are commercially useful. Italian-American culture, stylish Japanese aesthetics, Latin music, Korean entertainment, and now increasingly India too appears to be part of the conversation. 

    But real representation asks harder questions. Who’s writing the stories? Who’s directing them? Who’s behind the camera, in the boardroom, in the editorial meeting? It also asks what stories are being told and which ones are being left out. 

     

    “
    If you reduce a culture to backdrop often enough, its own people may start seeing it as something to outgrow rather than embrace. This shaped more than outsiders' perceptions of us — it began to shape our own.
    ”

     

    Undeniably, global institutions increasingly feel compelled to engage with India directly. Hollywood stars come to Mumbai. Luxury brands launch campaigns around Indian consumers. Streaming platforms compete aggressively for Indian audiences. International productions cast South Asian actors not as exceptions but as commercially sensible choices. These are signs that India is becoming harder to treat as peripheral. 

    The more important question is whether this visibility evolves into authorship. Soft power is meaningful not just when three Hollywood stars pop into a Mumbai restaurant, but when Indian creators increasingly shape the stories, images, and narratives that the rest of the world consumes. That’s the true transition from being a market to being a cultural force.

     

     

    So are the Olympia Coffee House photographs evidence of soft power or tokenism?

    Probably both.

    The tokenism exists because India matters. If India were irrelevant, nobody would bother performing cultural familiarity in the first place. But the existence of tokenism also reveals the limits of the current moment. Chai with movie stars makes for a compelling photograph; it does not necessarily signal a deeper engagement with Indian realities.

    And that may be the real shift underway. India is no longer simply being looked at. It is becoming too large—economically, culturally, and demographically—to be ignored. The challenge now is ensuring that visibility translates into influence, and that influence into the power to tell its own stories rather than merely appear in someone else’s.