Thinkpad: Game On!

Cricket is back on the Indian screens and I am sure there are many relieved channel surfers around. Nothing like a little cricket to keep India entertained and distracted amid a pandemic!

The difference, of course, is that IPL is happening in distant U.A.E. Still, as Bloomberg’s Daniel Moss wrote in his piece titled ‘Can Indian cricket survive without India’, depriving the country of its cricket in a year like this would have “piled cruelty on tragedy.”

And so IPL 2020 begins. From our partners at The Quint, here are some stats you may want to track:

• The top-scoring batsmen playing this season;
• The youngsters to watch out for;
• And which teams play best on the UAE pitches.

The business of IPL is as much or even more of a draw than the game itself. Just ahead of the games, Dream11, which won the title sponsorship of IPL 2020, was valued at close to $2.5 billion as it raised fresh funding. If you want to track the journey of the league’s sponsors, this piece by BloombergQuint’s Hormaz Fatakia is for you.

But there are games on the field and there are games being played off the field.

An interesting battle erupted on Friday between Google and Paytm.

It emerged that Google had taken down Paytm from its play store. Google said this was done because Paytm was violating its online gambling policies. Paytm said it was simply running an IPL-linked promotion where it offered cashback to customers who had collected cricket cards on their spends. The issue was eventually resolved and the app was back on the play store by end of day, but not before founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma called Google the “judge and jury” in an interview with CNBC-TV18. As Sharma tweeted news of the app’s return, he asked: “India, you decide if giving cash back is gambling.”

Why should you care? Well, there are a few interesting issues here.

One, the Indian payment space has become hyper-competitive. It is now a fight of Google vs Amazon vs Walmart-owned Flipkart vs Paytm. And this is even before WhatsApp, which still hasn’t launched a full-fledged payment service, comes in. In this competitive space, there have been bursts where smaller payment service providers have complained of being shortchanged by the biggies, who wield considerable power via their e-commerce platforms and app stores. Particularly in the case of the latter where Google and Apple form a duopoly of sorts.

Is that a part of what was happening between Google and Paytm?

Now, payments isn’t banking so maybe this is all to the benefit of the consumer and the potential for harm is relatively lower. But then again, the risk of unhealthy competition must be watched closely in any business linked to financial services and financial transactions.

We’ll leave you with a few reading/watching recommendations.

As the centre-state tussle over GST compensation brews, Menaka Doshi writes that its the trust deficit that needs to be addressed first.

Globally, the Bank of England gave the clearest signal yet that it may consider cutting interest rates below zero for the first time in its history.

For the universe of people who invest in financial services, this primer by the team at Marcellus is worth reading and saving. How to spot naughty lenders in India?

Finally, if you haven’t already, do watch ‘The Social Dilemma’ on Netflix. It’ll scare you. Maybe not enough to keep you away from posting about it on social media, though.

We’ll let you get back to the cricket now. We’re sure you have highlights to watch, boundaries, catches to debate, and friendly wagers to make.

Till next week.