Hey folks,

First off, we hope you celebrated Independence Day well!

And since yesterday was a publishing day off, we did not publish the wrapup, so here’s a quick recap of what we wrote this week.

On Monday, we explored what went wrong with the South Korean AI boom. On Tuesday, we broke down the Milky Mist IPO. On Wednesday, we did an explainer on whether blockchain can save London’s gold trade. On Thursday, we explored if UPI could scale in the future if it isn’t free. And on Friday, we looked at whether Vodafone Idea is finally making a comeback.

With that out of the way, here’s this week’s Sunny Side Up.

Here’s a soundtrack to put you in the mood… 🎵

Chor by Justh

You can thank our reader, Sahithi Paleti, for this lovely recommendation.

Also, folks, keep your music recommendations coming by replying to this email. We’d love to feature them in our Sunday editions, especially gems from underrated Indian artists many of us haven’t discovered yet. Can’t wait to hear them!

Ready to dive in?

What caught our eye this week 👀

Gen Z’s new strategy for career progression

Bare minimum Mondays, coffee badging, snail girl. Gen Z has a name for every micro-rebellion at work, and just when you think they might be starting to run out of ideas, along comes another one: "lily padding".

This one's about hopping jobs, moving from one role to another, and switching companies. Gen Z no longer wants to follow their parents’ path of climbing one ladder, hoping for stability and growth. In simpler words, Gen Z is behaving like a frog jumping to whichever pad is the greenest right now. 

But why is this happening? 

Well, for starters, this year, more than half of the professionals in India received an appraisal of less than 10%. Meanwhile, job-change hikes in India typically run 20-35%, and for niche or leadership roles, they can even touch 50%. So essentially this signals that the same skill set at a different company is worth much more.

And with rising living costs worldwide, lily padding starts to sound like smart financial planning rather than a behavioural issue with Gen Z. But what about stability, loyalty, or growth? The age-old tale tells us to be patient and wait for our salary to compound, much like what we expect from a fixed deposit. But when looking elsewhere starts to look lucrative, much like investing in the markets, how much patience can we realistically expect?

Foundit's latest appraisal survey backs this up. It found that 96% of professionals are open to switching jobs right now. Just 4% plan to stay put. Why? Because if you stay, you get 8%, but if you jump, you get almost triple the hike. 

As a result, companies have begun to cater to the 96% of people who are open to switching by introducing a new axis of competition: speed. The notice period has become a bargaining chip. Availability has somewhat become a currency. Some Indian firms now pay an extra 10-15% for candidates who can join within 30 days, instead of the standard 90-day notice period.

So it’s safe to say that lily padding goes beyond Gen Z. It’s a rational response to a system that only rewards you for switching and not staying. Because anyone who chooses to stay is actively choosing to lose money.

But corporate ladders exist for a reason. And when they actually work, they can take you somewhere meaningful. 

For example, Arundhati Bhattacharya joined SBI as a probationary officer in 1977 and rose through the ranks to become the bank’s first woman chairperson. That's not it, N. Chandrasekaran joined TCS in 1987 after completing his master’s degree, went on to become its CEO and Managing Director, and eventually became Chairman of Tata Sons in 2017. 

And these are only two examples from a long list. Careers like these made staying put feel like an investment. If you kept growing with the company, the company could grow your career with it.

And maybe that is what has changed.

Gen Z isn’t necessarily less patient or less loyal. They’re just asking for a return on that loyalty. If staying means smaller raises, slower growth, and fewer opportunities, while leaving turns the tables, hopping stops looking like rebellion and starts looking like the obvious choice.

If companies want people to stop jumping between lily pads, they may have to make staying on the same one worth it.

Readers Recommend

This week, our reader Purushotham Shenoy recommends reading The Carbon Paradox by Renat Heuberger, Steve Zwick and Marco Hirsbrunner.

He says,

It's an ambitious and genre-defying novel - a fictional work based on facts- that explores one of the thorniest questions of our time: how do we fund real climate action in an imperfect world?

It's an honest look at the contradictions of climate action. It names and explains the uncomfortable realities of climate action. The paradoxes outlined aren't theoretical; they reflect challenges that nearly every organization in this space encounters.

A necessary and uncomfortable read for anyone serious about climate action.

Finshots Weekly Quiz v2.0 🧠

Hey folks! As you probably already know, the Finshots Weekly Quiz has a new avatar. If you missed out on it in the last couple of months, don’t worry. Click here to check out the rules and set a reminder to participate consistently starting next month!

Next, let’s move on to the top scorers from our previous weekly quiz. There were a whole bunch of you who participated, and many of you ended up with the same scores. So we’re calling you Bulls, Bears, Unicorns, Blue Chips, and Rising Stars. Here’s how the leaderboard looks right now:

If your name has been featured on the leaderboard, then congratulations! If not, don’t lose hope. If you attempted last week’s quiz, keep at it and answer all the weekly quizzes this month. You never know when the turntables! Click on this link to take this week’s quiz, which is open till 12 noon, Friday, 21st of August, 2026. The more answers you get right, the better your chances of appearing on the Finshots Weekly Quiz leaderboard. We’ll publish it every Saturday in the Weekly Wrapup. And the winner will be announced in the first week of September.

That’s it from us this week. We’ll see you next Sunday.

Until then, send us your book, music (preferably from underrated Indian artists), business movies, documentaries, or podcast recommendations. We’ll feature them in this newsletter! Also, don’t forget to tell us what you thought of today’s edition. Just hit reply to this email (or if you’re reading this on the web, drop us a message at morning@finshots.in).

Don’t forget to share it with your friends, family, or even strangers on WhatsApp, LinkedIn, and X.

Also, if you’re someone who loves to keep tabs on what’s happening in the world of business and finance, then hit subscribe if you haven’t already. We strip stories off the jargon and deliver crisp financial insights straight to your inbox. Just one mail every morning. Promise!