Which part reads like an ad, Aviral? They neither spoke nor responded to specific questions. On the contrary, the story reveals how they've ridden the coattails of a particular govt and built a strategy around it. There's more to how they make money. In Part-2.

Seema Singh

Yuvaraj, thanks for pointing that out. We sourced data for both BCG and McKinsey from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, via a research agency called Tofler.

Seema Singh

Ayush, the article didn't say BCG is "focusing' on government work alone. They've used government work to raise their profile and get private sector work. Secondly, they also do a much wider variety, even lower-paying, work. So it is volume for BCG, value for McKinsey. I guess that's the key differentiation between the two right now. You'll get a flavour of this in Part-2.

Seema Singh

Aseem, sorry you got lost. Biologics is a biotech drug- made using living organisms—but a biosimilar is a copy of it. Just like you have regular innovator branded drugs, and then there are generics. Syngene is a subsidiary, the graphic makes it clear, no?

Seema Singh

Ajith, cloud definition is changing as services converge. The cloud of 10 yrs ago is not the cloud of today. I guess most informed experts today count IaaS, PaaS, SaaS under cloud services. And by that measure, Microsoft is indeed ahead of AWS.

Seema Singh

Vinay, thanks for reading the story. May I ask what is negative about this story? We'd be grateful if you could illuminate us. There's nothing like negative or positive in The Ken stories, it's either truth or falsehood. Instead of writing a rah-rah story on what a magnificent platform DIKSHA is, Olina chose to write about how it got built, how it's doing, how's it being positioned and what are its shortcomings. I am sure all the people behind the tech and operation of this platform will benefit from the meticulous work the writer has done. If you have any specific questions, please send them to Olina or post them here. She'll be happy to address them.

Seema Singh

It wasn't reported alongside the consolidated group Ebitda numbers. This quarter they separately reported Ebitda for Biocon Biologics, but not for Syngene.

Seema Singh

Anugrah, I'm astonished and sorry that you find no value in this story. That said, may I ask what do you mean by "this kind" of an article? And who is an average reader according to you? We write about business and we write about education. This story sits squarely in the middle of those two subjects. (I'd recommend reading our two-part coverage on B-schools in 2019.) Coming to Ashoka, it's one of the grandest and sincerest experiments in higher education—education as an enterprise—and it has been led by some successful entrepreneurs in the country. As journalists we love to chronicle such experiments and our readers appreciate that. Too bad that you found that story useless as well.

Seema Singh

Thanks Gaurav, and all other readers who've appreciated the article. Glad you all found it useful. I'd love to do more interviews but very few people in key positions are willing to speak their mind these days :)

Seema Singh

Thanks Amrit, point noted. But let me clarify— because you brought up subscription— all the stories this week are free to read. As for the insights into 2021, the stories that are threaded here are already forward looking. Beyond that there's not much that anyone can add at this point in time. We are in radically uncertain times. So it'll be unfair to do crystal ball gazing for our readers.

Seema Singh

RR, let me add to what Nadine said. Billionaire is not pejorative. Bill Gates is not referred to as an entrepreneur today, but as a billionaire even though his entire wealth owes to his entrepreneurship.

Seema Singh

Thanks, Samir. Yes, the way things are converging and the appetite big tech is showing in investing in the ecosystem play, it's going to further erode telecom and telecom gear industry. Already they have laid off so many people in India. It runs in tens of thousands.

Seema Singh