Magnus Carlsen and the finally sexy business of chess

The 1,500-year-old sport is breaking out of its geeky mould Read this edition online A weekly newsletter that often deconstructs but always explains the business of sport from India   Hello Jigar,   Are you caught up with all the drama in Indian cricket? My word, what an absolute shitshow it’s turning out to be. It’s almost as if the protagonists of Indian cricket watched Amazon Prime Video’s highly sensational and trashy show Inside Edge and thought—meh, we can do better than this.    Anyway, I’m not going to talk about Indian cricket today. There’s enough coverage already in the Indian media. This week, let’s talk about chess, which has been in the news recently for multiple reasons—no less the world chess championship that concluded in Dubai last week, with the magnificent Magnus Carlsen winning his fifth title. A shoutout to Moneyball reader Chandragupta Acharya for writing in and suggesting the idea. Cheers, Chandragupta! Magnus Carlsen and the finally sexy business of chess   I’m ashamed to admit I can’t play chess. I had started playing when I was about seven or eight years old but never followed through. I barely remember the rules now. But I might be forced to pick it up again sooner than later. Because India is soon going to have an IPL for chess. Earlier this week, the All India Chess Federation (AICF) announced that a new franchise-based chess league will launch in June next year. The Indian Chess League will be held over two weeks and will have six franchises. Each team will have two super grandmasters, two Indian grandmasters, two female grandmasters, and two Indian juniors.   “The idea is to not only draw the best players from around the world but also to provide India’s players a formidable platform to sharpen their skills,” says AICF secretary Bharat Singh Chauhan. “The matches will be telecast live to draw more and more players to chess. We will announce the criteria for becoming a franchise owner shortly. We have already received a good response from corporates.”   AICF, which governs Indian chess, will be a busy federation next year. Apart from the Indian Chess League, it plans to host 13 international tournaments in 2022. And on the domestic front, AICF announced a Rs 76 lakh (US$99,750) hike in prize money earlier this month—across all national chess championships. Why is chess seeing a revival?   Subscribe to this newsletter to find out!  7 more newsletters+250 stories every year+Visual Stories. Only for: ₹3245 or ₹250/mo Billed annually SUBSCRIBE Questions? Get answers here A weekly newsletter that often deconstructs but always explains the business of sport from India See previous editions on the web   Know someone who would like Moneyball? Share it   Want to receive Moneyball every week? Subscribe Moneyball is published by The Ken—a digital, subscription-driven publication focussing on technology, business, science and healthcare. Follow The Ken on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn This email was sent to jigar37.iilm09@blogger.com Something wrong? Tell us at support@the-ken.com Want to unsubscribe from our weekly newsletter, Moneyball? Click here. Or set your email preferences here © 2021  The Ken https://sg-mktg.com/MTYzOTczNzg0OXxoa0JLMVFZeWM4N3ZBY1Q5a21HdG4wajZPbm9LNXBHa0J4LUlSY3ZybWJDUEU2YkxYUGUweG9ac2Q4dE5xOHRSbXNaZ0VPai0tNlZ3bkZCbkllWkNBN3BUS0xveXhxWXk5THlMY0MyckJyWHJwQTFPTVctaGlnMkhjWUltYk9VVlRzZHA4dWlkUnRDams0MktMR05RenVTbDNIVkFzWjhMeGNvVEduZ2dzbDVGOVIyWmZ1UG1UY0ZCSzZwTVRhUjFEODRLd0g4MHExMDdxbVdMUWRZMzA4NGNNUXczcF9mZ1V5cDBPa3JUWkVhTGFxZmtFSXp0M0M4Tl90V0wwVUZTWG5uaWpDY29WUTdafPRdcaZcOGleX0KAITAfR55TLNZcHuY23Gff97Y8na2x

India’s Radio Ga Ga moment

Audio storytelling is making a comeback Read this edition online Narratives are the most powerful tools of our age. Each week, I deconstruct the dominant ones behind the success or failure of businesses, leaders and governments Good Morning Jigar,   Stories are often first written down these days. And then, they are adapted for various mediums. Audio books, movies, graphic novels… Take your pick.   We've already talked about how powerful showing is as a storytelling tool. But the spoken word can be equally effective. In fact, a story can excite every sense no matter what the medium. Written words can turn into visual sequences; audio can sometimes provoke a sense of smell, or touch. And reading a story aloud can be quite the intimate experience, as Japanese author Haruki Murakami writes in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: "Reading aloud is different from just following sentences with your eyes. Something quite unexpected wells up in your mind, a kind of indefinable resonance that I find impossible to resist."  Think onomatopoeia as a form of theatre in graphic novels. Remember, also, the kind of authenticity and intimacy that radio show hosts used to bring to the table, before the business of storytelling began to be dominated by the visual medium.    Well, audio may have been down for a while, but it certainly isn't out. And that's what this edition's first piece is about: Audio storytelling's comeback story. India's Radio Ga Ga moment   Earlier this week, market research firm RedSeer forecast that India would have 95 million monthly active users consuming online audio content by the end of this month.    These users listen to audio across formats (podcasts, audiobooks, etc.) and are set to grow by 34% over the past year. And with just 12% of the Indian population ever having listened to a podcast before, their numbers are expected to continue rising. It seems India, already the third-largest podcast market in the world after the US and China, is rediscovering its love for audio storytelling. Why is audio-only content making a comeback?   Subscribe to this newsletter to find out! 7 more newsletters+250 stories every year+Visual Stories. Only for: ₹3245 or ₹270/mo Billed annually SUBSCRIBE Narratives are the most powerful tools of our age. Each week, I deconstruct the dominant ones behind the success or failure of businesses, leaders and governments See previous editions on the web   Know someone who would like Inciting Incident? Share it   Want to receive Inciting Incident every week? Subscribe Inciting Incident is published by The Ken—a digital, subscription-driven publication focussing on technology, business, science and healthcare. Follow The Ken on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn This email was sent to jigar37.iilm09@blogger.com Something wrong? Tell us at support@the-ken.com Want to unsubscribe from our weekly newsletter, Inciting Incident? Click here. Or set your email preferences here © 2021  The Ken https://sg-mktg.com/MTYzOTcxMjA1MXxPX2N0LS1NRk9hN2RrSFVrRUpzNjRWZTgtQ1RSTFhsdThiZzU3X2VXNWo5TjU1QnE2YVM2REh4cGg2akduQTJ1SDdnZHBtZVdqMmljMmlXOS01Yzc3V0RXYnpaeE12djkySWc1X01TRTg2V0R5MHdTblBOYjY0c3RvWS16VzBtR1JPTWMyRzgtTldNTHV4Vlh5bHFnR1h4dUxyZnN4UjVhbkh5TFpmVE1neXJMMFVWQ083N0l1S1puam5FQTRaWTY1dHJjQWNNS0p0M3FtZDBYOXMwcnZMUE1GeGZzSkttRjlFTU5IZE40cTZRaEJxLVpBZkFBQWVwSnlJR1ZCaUN4RFRRNzVtVk4zU3ktfAoWxEubWCcgHTa9pH0rl25oXF1YHIh0pqtwG1-Aq560

Don’t burn it, cash it

Spending US$5.5 million on a pilot, nurture.farm shows it's possible to stop burning stubble and put more money in farmers' hands. Is rapid scaling possible, too? Read this edition online Climate change's impact on India's business, tech, finance, & politics. Analysed and explained every Wednesday. Good Morning Jigar,   Size really matters. Anything to do with India, agriculture, and sustainability requires solutions deployed at scale. It also requires a systems approach.   Take stubble burning, for instance. Harvesting machines have unleashed this deleterious practice on Indian farms—the largest exporter of rice in the world—which no amount of tinkering has managed to fix.    This year, agritech startup nurture.farm, along with a management school and an agricultural institute, attempted an intervention that seems to work. But what has worked on 420,000 acres, or less than 7-8% of the affected area in just two states, will have to be expanded multiple times over to register any wholesale impact.    While the company may claim that this is 150X the size of any such intervention till date, the beauty and the challenge lie not just in scaling the effort, but sustaining the business of stopping stubble burning.    For now, a look at what happened this year. CRM as SaaS   The seasonal stubble burning visuals from north India are already sliding into memory. The National Capital Region's (NCR) air quality index is also improving to "poor quality". But before the annual hot-button issue diffuses into foggy December and the year-end slack, let's dwell on some good news.   It was mechanised farming that led to mass stubble burning in the first place. Large harvesting machines left stalks that were several inches tall and required much longer to decompose in the field. Lighting a match did the trick. In the process, it gutted air quality and soil health. Indian farmers burn some 92 million tonnes of stubble every year. But last week, a crop residue management (CRM) report from agritech startup nurture.farm’s pilot showed that mechanised farming, new bio-decomposers, digital data collection, app-based services, satellite monitoring, and field force training can make a significant dent.   Of the 420,000 acres worked by some 25,000 farmers that the project serviced in Punjab and Haryana, the two most affected states, the startup claims 92% of farms did not burn crop residue. In Punjab, only 3% of the farmland serviced by the project burned stubble this year, while 68% of these farms had resorted to the practice in 2020.   In Haryana, this number came down to 14% in 2021 from 86% in 2020. How is nurture.farm bringing down stubble burning?   To read the full newsletter, subscribe to The Ken. Also get access to:  7 other sharp newsletters  250 new, original stories every year Visual Stories 5 years of exclusive paywalled stories Only at: ₹270/mo Billed annually SUBSCRIBE Climate change's impact on India's business, tech, finance, & politics. Analysed and explained every Wednesday See previous editions on the web   Know someone who would like Green Margins? Share it   Want to receive Green Margins every week? Subscribe Green Margins is published by The Ken—a digital, subscription-driven publication focussing on technology, business, science and healthcare. Follow The Ken on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn This email was sent to jigar37.iilm09@blogger.com Something wrong? Tell us at support@the-ken.com Want to unsubscribe from our weekly newsletter, Green Margins? Click here. Or set your email preferences here © 2021  The Ken https://sg-mktg.com/MTYzOTUzMjA0N3xHWTBNbXRtWnpHQUd3V3JIWnVlb284VmI2WHR4Y0pSRURIXzFXS0RPOTJOcVA5MklCRnBiZVcyeFpBWVV3ZG5vQ3kzRmxRcktKbG1iZk44c0p3azZnaUVmbzAzeTlEbTRLbHdOWW9BYkZNenoxbHFKMldNbGJldmR1d1p0X1hkbmhGY0lRRHA1U3hZdXFtOERFckZvU19hdTR2b0xFZy05SEh2WFpULTNraUZhQmZkQl9HYWtCamlWc3JTcFJ6bnlLUnN0VjZmQzI5T0VTRWpZQVJHRVlmTDlxSzUzT0psby1YYnl6bm0waG1VbllvSG1KdFhVOTJZMEhiQXVDV08xcWhoTE85WWdOTmxifL1YjnJZwzRQszLVRoOXsh3UL7Ijw4RTud19aVJUAHZc