The GST 2.0 impact on India’s businesses; Decoding battery data for businesses

How much can gold shine? On Friday, it rallied to a record-high price at $3,596.49 per ounce—now on track for its strongest weekly gain in nearly four months. 

Bullion has surged 37% so far this year, driven by US dollar weakness, a softening monetary policy backdrop, and wider geopolitical and economic uncertainty. In fact, top gold consumers China and India saw physical gold sales drop this week amid record high prices. 

But there’s always digital gold savings! 

Kunal Shah-led CRED has begun testing a gold-savings feature that allows users to invest in digital gold, while offering select members 1% cashback in the asset on bill payments as part of the pilot. All about CRED’s new feature here.

ICYMI: OpenAI to rival Microsoft’s LinkedIn—AI style!

In a bizarre turn of events, Mark Zuckerberg is suing Mark Zuckerberg! 

The former Zuckerberg, a bankruptcy lawyer in Indiana, US, uses a commercial Facebook page to advertise his legal practice and communicate with potential clients. But his page has been disabled five times in the last eight years, since Meta’s moderation systems flag his account as falsely impersonating the latter Zuckerberg, the founder of the platform.

Lastly, after Giorgio Armani’s passing, what will happen to his fashion empire? It’s a tricky affair!

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• The GST 2.0 impact on India’s businesses
• Decoding battery data for businesses
• Health boost for Indian sweets

Here’s your trivia for today: How many countries does the equator pass through?

Regulation

The GST 2.0 impact on India’s businesses

A simplified tax structure, GST cuts, and other reforms under the new GST 2.0 framework have unlocked benefits for sectors from FMCG to MSMEs and aerospace. 

GST 2.0 promises to ease compliance burdens, unlock working capital, and enhance global competitiveness for MSMEs, remove tax inconsistencies for drone components, and provide relief to consumers on everyday necessities. 

Key takeaways:

• Effective September 22, the GST structure will now comprise only two primary slabs—5% and 18%, replacing the earlier four-tier system. The tweaks are designed to simplify tax rates and, in turn, ease pressure on household budgets with slightly cheaper MRP tags on supermarket shelves.
• Whether it is textiles, tourism or automobiles, MSMEs stand to benefit directly through reduced tax inversion, lower costs, and easier compliance. For millions of small enterprises, this means greater liquidity, faster formalisation, and deeper integration into organised supply chains.
• A flat 5% levy on commercial drones, while exempting defence-grade models and core components, marks a significant shift for India’s drone sector. Until now, tax on the segment has been inconsistent, as drones with integrated cameras attracted 18%, and recreational models faced rates of up to 28%.

Top Funding Deals of the Week

Startup: CityMall

Amount: $47M

Round: Series D

Startup: Seekho

Amount: $28M

Round: Series B

Startup: FirstClub

Amount: $23M

Round: Series A

Startup

Decoding battery data for businesses

When BITS Pilani alumni Arjun Sinha Roy and Anirudh Ramesh began observing the climate tech industry, they realised that the real business potential resided at the heart of a clean machine: its battery. 

In 2018, the duo co-founded iRasus Technologies, an energy analytics startup that builds software to monitor battery health, track performance, and optimise energy usage for businesses. 

Predictive insights:

• The startup’s flagship product is Preksha, an AI-enabled SaaS platform that extracts and analyses data from batteries and provides insights to businesses in real-time. 
• One of the areas that iRasus focuses on heavily is fault management. Every battery system sends out native fault codes, which Preksha detects. The software then looks at the trends and decides whether the faults are critical or non-critical, based on which the business can make decisions.
• The company has about 10 clients right now, including Veera Vahana for its electric buses and HCD India for electric two-wheelers. It is aiming to have around 25 clients by the end of the year. 

Listicle

Health boost for Indian sweets

For generations, Indian sweets have been synonymous with celebrations, nostalgia, and indulgence, but they have also carried the baggage of excess sugar, ghee, and empty calories. Today, with rising health awareness and lifestyle diseases like diabetes becoming common, the mithai industry is undergoing a quiet revolution.

Traditional recipes are being reimagined with healthier ingredients like jaggery, dates, stevia, millets, and nuts, catering to a new generation of consumers who want to enjoy guilt-free sweets. What’s more, many of these brands are combining craftsmanship with modern food science, certifications, and global packaging standards.

News & updates

• Steps down: Girish Mathrubootham, Co-founder of Nasdaq-listed Freshworks and one of the leading voices of India’s SaaS sector, will step down as Executive Chairman of the company effective December 1, 2025. In a filing with the US SEC, Freshworks said Mathrubootham will focus on Together Fund, the VC fund he co-founded. 
• Richie rich: Elon Musk could become the world’s first trillionaire if he hits targets set by Tesla, under a scheme disclosed by the EV company he runs and in which he is the largest shareholder. Tesla outlined the terms of the incentive package, unprecedented in corporate history, in a section of its latest stock market update that began: “Yes, you read that correctly.”
• Another one: Alphabet’s Google was hit with a 2.95 billion euro ($3.45 billion) EU antitrust fine for anti-competitive practices in its lucrative adtech business, marking its fourth penalty in its decade-long fight with the European Union competition regulators.

How many countries does the equator pass through?

Answer: 13. 

Ecuador, Colombia, and Brazil in South America; Sao Tome and Principe, Gabon, the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Kenya, and Somalia in Africa; Maldives, Indonesia, and Kiribati in Asia.

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