Market Competition Analysis

TSMC posted a $440 million loss at its Arizona factory. American engineers called it "rigid, brutal, prison-like." Taiwanese managers complained about "lack of dedication and obedience." TSMC’s CEO Morris Chang saw this coming. "A very expensive exercise in futility," he called America's chip push. Taiwan doesn't just make chips. It breathes them. Three decades of alignment created something money can't buy. In Arizona, Americans clock out after shifts. In Taiwan, engineers sleep in the fab. In Arizona, decisions need consensus. In Taiwan, orders flow down. In Arizona, it's a job. In Taiwan, it's national service. Chang knew this at 55 when he started TSMC. The playbook worked because a nation aligned behind it: 1. Bet everything on survival Apple wanted impossible chips. Chang bet $9 billion in 2010 - half TSMC's cash. 6,000 people. 11 months. Round the clock. Because missing Apple meant Taiwan missing its future. 2. Never compete with customers Intel Corporation controlled everything. TSMC said: "We will never compete with our customers." When Nvidia shares five-year roadmaps, thousands protect them like state secrets. 3. Make enemies share factories Nvidia and AMD share production lines at TSMC. Works only when factory workers see both companies' success as Taiwan's success. 4. Turn precision into DNA TSMC's latest machines hit tin droplets 50,000 times per second. In Taiwan, this precision extends everywhere - emails, meetings, weekends. Not policy. Culture. 5. Compound for decades Every supplier grew with TSMC. Every university shaped curricula around them. Chang: "You cannot replicate this with subsidies. You cannot legislate dedication." 6. See the future through customers When Qualcomm fled IBM for TSMC in the late '90s, Chang knew IBM was doomed. Intel built walls. TSMC built bridges. TAKEAWAY: 2007: Intel rejected iPhone chip. Too low margin. Cost them mobile. Then AI. Then everything. Intel's real problem wasn't saying no to Apple. It was believing one company could do it all. Meanwhile, a 55-year-old built something stronger: a nation aligned around making everyone else successful. Today: Every ChatGPT query. Every iPhone. Every Nvidia chip. All TSMC. Not because Taiwan has the best engineers. Because Taiwan made engineering excellence a cultural value. And culture, unlike factories, can't be copy-pasted. — Want the full story of how TSMC became Nvidia's $1 trillion secret weapon? I went deep on the untold details: https://lnkd.in/epuWHu8B P.S. All research links, the audio clip, and the full archive are in the first comment below 👇

Do academic researchers perform better in more aggressive, masculine hyper-competitive cultures? No, in such environments they have: 🔹lower publication rates 🔹lower citation impact 🔹lower employee well-being 🔹higher turnover intentions This is shown in a new paper by Maria Guadalupe, Daisy Pollenne, and Kaisa Snellman, using unique survey and archival data across leading European business schools. The negative associations hold for both men and women. Even star performers do not do better in hyper-competitive cultures. The authors conclude that: "The absence of performance benefits calls into question the view that aggressively competitive cultures are a necessary feature of high-performing academic environments. Instead, our findings suggest that there is scope for advancing alternative ways of organizing academic work that do not rely on hyper-competitive dynamics and that instead better align individual well-being with sustained research productivity." Read the full study here: Maria Guadalupe, Daisy Pollenne, and Kaisa Snellman (2026), Publish and Perish? Hyper-Competitive Culture, Performance and Well-being in Academia, INSEAD Working Paper: https://lnkd.in/er9mBPis Culture is measured in this paper using the masculinity contest culture scale: In my institution: “Admitting you don’t know the answer looks weak” “It’s important to be in good physical shape to be respected” “Taking days off is frowned upon” “If you don’t stand up for yourself, people will step on you”

Enter ZZ2…and just like that, tomato prices collapse 🙄. This is supply and demand in its rawest form, and nowhere is it more brutal than in food systems. ZZ2 is one of South Africa’s largest tomato producers. When a player of that scale enters the market during peak harvest, volumes surge almost overnight. Retailers respond predictably: prices drop, often sharply, sometimes by 30-60% in a matter of days. Not because food suddenly became cheaper to produce, but because the market is flooded!!! Here’s what’s often overlooked: Tomatoes are highly perishable. Farmers can’t store them and wait for better prices the way other industries can. A tomato has days, not months. When oversupply hits, producers are forced to sell below cost or dump produce entirely. Now imagine if the same logic applied to the car industry 🤭.. A manufacturer releases excess stock, and suddenly your brand-new vehicle loses half its value within a week, with unsold units scrapped because they “expired.” That would be unthinkable. Yet in food, this is normalised. The uncomfortable truth is this: Our food pricing system rewards volume, not sustainability 😢 . Large players survive on scale and thin margins. Small and emerging farmers don’t. And when prices collapse, hunger doesn’t disappear, livelihoods do! Cheap food on the shelf often carries a hidden cost upstream. If we’re serious about food security, farmer sustainability, and reducing food waste, we need to start questioning the systems we’ve accepted as “normal.” #justanotherdayinagriculture

bigbasket just abandoned its entire traditional e-commerce business for 10-minute deliveries. India's largest grocer has already ditched their entire business model. ❌ No more planned deliveries.  ❌ No more time slots. Starting next month, everything will be delivered in 10-30 minutes. The pivot was inevitable as BigBasket was losing the race badly: → Revenue grew only 6.27% in FY24 while competitors exploded  → BB Now has just 10% market share despite being India's largest grocer → Blinkit's revenue jumped 145% in the same period  → Zepto raised $665 million and became the poster child of quick commerce Even customers are moving more towards quick commerce, as quick commerce grew 77% last year vs. traditional e-commerce at 13%. BigBasket built their reputation on scheduled deliveries for over a decade, but consumer behavior shifted faster than they adapted. Now they're throwing $1 billion to catch up. This is what makes this move massive: → Expanding from 400 to 700 dark stores  → Targeting $1 billion revenue just from quick commerce  → Complete abandonment of their original model in upcoming months Consumer behavior has shifted, and people want everything fast. The convenience economy is here to stay. For Zepto and Blinkit, this means serious competition is coming. A well-funded, experienced player with deep pockets just entered their game. For consumers, this means better prices and faster service as competition heats up. Has quick delivery changed how you shop?

₹800 Crore Beverage Playbook: How an Auto Driver Built a Cola Empire Without Ads India doesn’t have a beverage problem; it's a distribution problem. 1. Old model: Celebrity endorsements, massive ad budgets, urban-first strategy, and premium pricing. 2. New model: Kirana-first distribution, zero ad dependency, local taste engineering and aggressive pricing. This shift is powered by Sathya Shankar through SG Corporation. ✅ THE NUMBERS 1. Revenue: ₹800 Cr 2. Retail reach: 100,000+ outlets 3. Manufacturing: 4+ plants 4. Pricing: 30–40% lower than MNCs 5. Retailer margins: 15–20% higher than competitors Low price for consumers. High margin for retailers. ✅ The Real Insight: Distribution Beats Branding Global giants sell aspiration. Shankar sold availability. Always in stock. Always chilled. Always visible. - Because in India, if it’s not in the fridge, it doesn’t exist. This is shelf-share economics, not mindshare. ✅ Where the Real Money Is Made 1. Product doesn’t build beverage brands. Distribution does. Focus on Tier 2 & Tier 3 markets. Deep kirana penetration. Strong retailer incentives & retailer chooses what sells fastest. And what earns them more 2. Result: Front-row fridge placement. Every time. That’s the moat. ✅ Hyper-Local Advantage 1. While MNCs globalize taste, SG localises it. Jeera soda for Indian palate Strong, spicy flavour profiles are designed for heat & mass consumption. This is not adaptation. This is native product design. 2. Because Indian consumers don’t want subtle. They want impact. ✅ Origin Advantage The early years weren’t a struggle. They're training. 1. Auto driving → understanding demand patterns 2. Distribution work → learning last-mile logistics 3. Saving capital → building ground-up knowledge ✅ Hidden Moat: Retail Economics - Why do kirana stores push this brand? Simple: They earn more. Higher margins vs global brands. Faster inventory turnover. Local supply reliability - In FMCG, the retailer is the real gatekeeper. Win the retailer → win the market. - Luxury purchases like Rolls-Royce or Bentley aren’t just indulgences. They are signals. Builds supplier trust, unlocks credit lines and creates a perception of scale. In business, perception is leverage, and leverage drives growth. - SG Corporation is now upgrading AI-led logistics tracking, real-time bottle return systems & lower glass logistics cost. - Plus: Entry into packaged snacks. - Target: ₹1,500 Crore scale This is moving from beverage brand → FMCG platform. ✅ Let me share the #Rajspectives 1. Distribution is the real moat in FMCG. 2. Retailers decide winners, not ads. 3. Local taste beats global branding. 4. Margins drive placement. Placement drives sales. 5. Solve for the mass market, and scale follows. Sathya Shankar didn’t try to beat Coca-Cola or Pepsi at branding. He beat them at availability. Because in India, the brand that reaches the smallest shop. Controls the biggest market. #india #fmcg #business #startups #distribution #strategy

Mario Draghi's analysis of the future of European competitiveness highlights the changes that I have long considered necessary and urgent. Draghi points out that the telecom sector is overcrowded: "Today, the EU has dozens of telecom players serving around 450 million consumers, compared with a handful in the US and China, respectively," and adds, "as a result, in Europe both revenues per subscriber and capital expenditure per capita (...) are less than half the US’ and Japan’s levels," reaching the conclusion that "the declining profitability of the telecom sector now may represent a risk for industrial companies in Europe." There couldn’t be a more authoritative confirmation of the perfect storm I also described on stage at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in 2023 (https://lnkd.in/dfi5yQss). That’s where I showed how it was necessary and urgent to change the rules of the game, because #InactionIsNotAnOption. Some may have thought I was being provocative, but step by step, we are all converging on the same positions. First, there was the report "Much More than a Market" by Enrico Letta and Jacques Delors Institute, then the White Paper by the European Commission with Thierry Breton "How to master Europe’s digital infrastructure needs?". Now, Mario Draghi's perspective joins them, recommending to "reform the EU’s regulation and competition stance to complete the digital single market for telecommunications, harmonizing rules and favoring cross-border mergers and operations," and he adds in more detail: • "reduce country-level ex ante regulation and favor rather ex post competition enforcement • facilitate cross-border integration and the creation of EU-wide players • introduce a ‘same rules for same services’ principle across the EU • encourage the definition of commercial contractual agreements for terminating data traffic and infrastructure cost-sharing • incentivize the deployment of new infrastructures by defining cut-off dates for older technologies". Well, let’s continue down this path, united as we are already doing, thanks to the work of organizations such as the Confindustria team led by Emanuele Orsini, GSMA, and Connect Europe, with the indispensable contribution of the Ministero delle Imprese e del Made in Italy by Adolfo Urso, Alessio Butti, Agcom, and AGCM. We are ready to do our part, aware that the game we are playing is one of the most important: without #TLC, there is no digitalization. Report “The future of European Competitiveness”: https://lnkd.in/dhb875VR

Vietnam’s food delivery market just hit a massive $2.1$ billion dollars in GMV, growing at 19% year-on-year. While that makes it the second fastest-growing market in SEA, the market remains brutal. 🛵 In just 2 years, we’ve seen heavyweights like BAEMIN and Gojek pull out, alongside local player Loship. Today, a staggering 92% of the market is controlled by just two names: ShopeeFood and GrabFood. 🟠ShopeeFood has effectively "captured" the younger demographic. By leveraging the Shopee ecosystem, they’ve made bubble tea and low-value snacks a daily ritual. 🟢On the other side, GrabFood has moved "upmarket." They are the go-to for the high-income professional. Their focus is on full meals, group orders, and a smoother user interface. 📉The Loyalty Gap Despite the massive GMV, there is a growing tension in the air: Price Gap: Meals on apps are now significantly more expensive than eating on-site. The "Order Batching” Problem: Drivers often carry multiple orders at once to stay profitable. For the customer, this means watching your "cơm văn phòng" go on a city tour while it slowly turns cold. 🛵The New Challenger This is exactly where Xanh SM Ngon is trying to disrupt the duopoly. By using an all-electric fleet and a strict "no-batching" policy, they want to prove that speed and temperature are the new moats. Such intense competition in Food Delivery will only increase the pace of innovation. In such a hyper mobile society, blue prints for FMCG & new technologies are being developed that will have impact, far beyond Vietnam's borders. Source: Momentum Works, IPOS, NielsenIQ, Decision Lab, VnExpress, B-company, The Investor *While information from Asia Circles is publicly accessible and derived from third-party sources, its verification and validity are not guaranteed. #FoodTech #MarketInsights #ConsumerInsight #ShopeeFood #GrabFood

David and I just got back from Taiwan where we interviewed Dr. Morris Chang, the 93-year-old founder of TSMC. TSMC's impact on the world has been so profound since its founding in 1987 that it's hard to comprehend. It is the only trillion-dollar company in Asia, and one of the very few outside the US West Coast. They are the only company in the entire world capable of making the leading-edge chips that go in your iPhone, Mac, and NVIDIA's newest GPUs for AI. They spend money $20 billion at a time on a regular basis to build the new fabs to do all of this. They perform one of the most complicated processes known to mankind, and it happens with comparably little attention from the western world. For the Acquired playbook on this one, I figured I'd lay out two of the things that have made TSMC really work: 1) 📉 The Learning Curve is the core of the semiconductor industry When you're manufacturing something, you get better at it over time. (Duh.) As you get better, your costs decrease. Your yields increase. And you can sink more capital into expensive up-front fixed costs that will make your variable costs lower. TSMC is this idea taken to its logical extreme. The way to win the market for semiconductors is to make them more cheaply and more reliably than anyone else. And the way to do that... is to make the most of them. TSMC shipped 16 MILLION wafers last year (with hundreds of chips per wafer). In any given technology generation, they must ask "how can we become the largest volume player in order to offer the lowest price to customers?" Their goal is to get into large-scale production as early as possible. And of course, if you do that... you also pile up the most cash... and can make larger investments in the NEXT generation of fabs than anyone else... so the cycle continues. 2) 🏁 Never compete with your customer The heart of TSMC is the pure-play foundry model. In 1987 when they started, the overwhelming majority of the semiconductor industry was IDMs (integrated device manufacturers). This meant that the design and manufacturing of integrated circuits was under one roof (i.e. Intel today). TSMC did the opposite. They focused solely on manufacturing and to this day, have not designed a single chip. They serve over 500 customers, and learn to integrate and work well with each of these "dance partners". That requires a very different culture than working with just one chip design group that also lives inside your company! Aside from technology leadership and manufacturing excellence, this obsession with customer service is core to TSMC's strategy and its culture. The full interview with Dr. Chang has some pretty wild stories. He shares how TSMC won Apple's business, and a time in 2009 when the relationship with Jensen and NVIDIA was on the ropes... and how they fixed it. Here's the full episode (with video!): https://lnkd.in/ghQpRmAR #AI #silicon #semiconductors #artificialintelligence

Uber is no longer just investing in Delivery Hero — it is moving closer to the crown jewels Uber has increased its stake in Delivery Hero to 19.5%, while securing another 5.6% through options. That is no passive position. In platform economics, stakes of this size create strategic proximity: proximity to assets, data, regional market leadership and future optionality. The interesting part is not only Delivery Hero itself. It is the portfolio underneath. Delivery Hero controls some of the most strategic delivery assets across high-growth regions: • talabat in the Gulf region • Yemeksepeti in Turkey • Glovo across Southern Europe, Africa and parts of Eastern Europe These are not simply delivery brands. They are deeply embedded local consumer infrastructure platforms with strong logistics density, high order frequency and significant market share in regions where competition barriers are structurally high. Uber already dominates mobility in many global cities. The missing piece has always been stronger positioning in several international delivery markets outside North America. This latest move inevitably raises a larger question: Is Uber gradually positioning itself for deeper strategic influence over Delivery Hero’s most valuable regional assets? The timing adds another layer. The investment increase follows governance pressure from shareholders, the announced departure of co-founder Niklas Östberg and Delivery Hero’s ongoing strategic review. In global platform markets, strategic stakes are rarely only financial. They create visibility, influence and potential pathways toward partnerships, asset carve-outs, regional consolidation or eventually larger transactions. The delivery sector is entering a different phase now. The era of aggressive expansion is giving way to: • consolidation • profitability focus • ecosystem control • infrastructure ownership • regional dominance And in that environment, platforms like Talabat, Yemeksepeti and Glovo become exceptionally strategic assets. Uber’s latest move suggests the company understands exactly that. #uber #deliveryhero #glovo #talabat #yemeksepeti #fooddelivery #quickcommerce #ecommerce #retail #retailtech #foodtech #logistics #platformeconomy #mobility #digitalcommerce #marketplaces #consumertech #investors #privateequity #venturecapital #startups #technology #marketing #sales #omnichannel #germany #usa #turkey #middleeast #europe

In 2021, Rajiv Bajaj famously said he bets on BET (Bajaj, Enfield, TVS) and that champions eat OATS (Ola, Ather, Tork or SmartE). At the time, Ola Electric and Ather Energy were trailblazing India’s 2W EV revolution, supported by innovation and government subsidies. They quickly emerged among the top three brands by market share. Fast forward to 2025, and the BET has indeed paid off. Bajaj Auto Ltd and TVS Motor Company have surged ahead, leading the charge in India’s evolving EV landscape. While Ola and Ather grapple with EBITDA losses per vehicle, their recent #IPOs mark a pivotal turn. These public offerings will fuel their capacity expansion and sharpen their focus on the affordable segment, both essential to strengthen unit economics and ensure long-term viability. The 2025 market share 🛵 graph from Vahan shows a vibrant mix of leaders, with Bajaj, TVS, Ola, and Ather occupying the top four positions—reflecting a #dynamic and #maturing industry. With falling battery and BOM costs, stronger supplier ecosystems, and robust demand, India’s EV ⚡ journey is accelerating. With the 🇮🇳 Indian 2W EV market projected to grow from 1 million to nearly 10 million by 2030, the journey will be driven by a potent blend of nimble #startups and trusted #giants,  building the future of mobility in India. #auto #ev #startups #electric #mobility