Hi, I’m Esta Richards
a Creative Consultant. Mental Health Educator. Lifestyle Fitness Consultant.

Why Walmart is trouncing Amazon in the grocery wars

When amazon announced the $13.7bn acquisition of Whole Foods Market in 2017, it came after some oddball attempts to strengthen its grocery business, some conceived by Jeff Bezos himself. One was to develop an “ice-cream truck for adults”, driving into neighbourhoods with lights flashing and horns honking, to sell porterhouse steaks, Shigoku oysters, Nintendo games and other goodies. It was quietly shelved. Another was to create a product so unique that only Amazon could supply it. The answer was the “single-cow burger”, a Wagyu beef patty made from the meat of one animal. You can still find them on its website—though they are now permanently out of stock.

Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods signalled it would take a more conventional approach to the supermarket business. That is probably why, when the deal was announced, Amazon’s share price soared and those of its rivals, such as Walmart, fell. But since then Amazon has treated grocery more like a science experiment than an exercise in seduction, with weak results at Whole Foods and in other formats. Its best-known addition to the retail experience is the “just walk out” technology in physical stores, equivalent to its one-click shopping online. Yet cashierless supermarkets sound like something more beloved of geeks than grocers. What may cut down on time-wasting queues also minimises what some people love about shopping: the human interaction at the till, the hunter-gatherer instinct as they jostle at the meat counter, the Columbian exchange between fellow foodies at the spice rack.

Banking startup started Elon Musk’s passion for the letter X

Elon Musk has been pushing the X brand since before the turn of the century, starting with online banking site X.com in 1999.

Musk has been open about his love of the letter X for a long time. Many people are only becoming aware of it now that he’s folded one of the largest social media sites on the internet into his X plans.

Here’s the timeline of his love for the letter.

n 1999, Musk and three other cofounders launched X.com.

It was an online bank that merged with a competitor, Confinity, in 2000. That same year, Musk was voted out as CEO, replaced by Peter Thiel.

Musk founded the Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, otherwise known as SpaceX, in 20o2

Fast-forward to 2015, Elon Musk’s car company Tesla introduced the Model X, a midsize electric SUV.

And later, in 2017, Musk buys back the X.com domain from his PayPal days.

The entreprenuer planted the seed for what would eventually be Twitter’s replacement.

Expert advice: Should you spend 25% of your income on investing in stocks?

In an interview with ETMarkets, Bhave, who has over 25 years of experience across the financial services industry in India, UAE, and Vietnam, said: “We believe that a few midcap companies with strong management and robust business models will potentially become large caps over the next 3-5 years” Edited excerpts:India has turned out to be the bright spot in the global arena.

How do you see markets in the medium term?
India’s long-term structural growth story remains intact, and this is the main reason why domestic equity markets have outperformed their larger global counterparts since the beginning of this year.

Even after global concerns like elevated inflation, hawkish central bank policies, and geopolitical turmoil, several domestic companies are around their 52-week highs. The same is true of the benchmark indices too.

This happened on the back of the revival of FII inflows and continued domestic inflows in the form of retail participation through mutual fund SIPs, EPFO and NPS investments coupled with strong HNI participation.

This positive momentum has been built up due to fundamental economic reasons like the resilience of domestic demand, early signs of a slowdown in inflation, strong credit growth, healthier bank balance sheets, and the government’s strong initiatives on manufacturing and infrastructure spending. India is expected to have the fastest GDP growth among the world’s major economies. As always, it is difficult to predict short-term market moves, and the market is likely to move further northwards in the medium term.