In this week's wrapup, we talk about the concept of ‘company towns’, electronic soil, Japan’s business resilience and more.

For the markets edition this week, we talked about the battle between skill and luck in the stock markets. You can read it here.

Meanwhile, here’s a recap of what we wrote over the week.

Does Tata ‘own’ Jamshedpur?

A couple of days ago the Jharkhand government gave Jamshedpur a green signal to it into an industrial town. This means that the Tata group could potentially take over administrative control of the city. So on Monday we wrote a story that traces Tata’s journey from over a century ago and what it means for a private company to own a city. You can read it here.

What the heck is eSoil?

Last week, some scientists from Sweden found a way to grow plants faster. And guess what? This method doesn’t even need soil. All it needs is water, nutrients and a soil-less surface that roots can attach to. They pass an electric current through this surface and voila, they had a blossoming plant! And they are calling ti electronic soil. In fact, these scientists found that barley seedlings grew 50% faster in 15 days. That obviously fascinated us. So we wrote about it here.

Why can't continents be single markets like the EU?

Jacques Delors, former president of the European Commission passed away last week. He was considered one of the reasons why the Eurozone got a single currency and a leader who paved the way for Europe’s free trade market or the EU (European Union).

That got us thinking about why other economies haven’t had single markets that stand out like the EU. So we wrote a story about it. You can read it here.

How do Japan's businesses survive disasters?

If you glanced at the morning paper or scoured through internet headlines you probably know that Japan is suffering earthquakes. Now, Japan suffers thousands of earthquakes every year. Yet it has managed to stay the fourth largest global economy.

Ever wondered how its businesses survive and bounce back every time? Well, we did. And we found some beautiful secrets about Japan’s business resilience. You can read our story about it here.

Why is everyone talking about Bitcoin ETFs?

In December 2023 Bitcoin's price rallied to nearly $45,000 a pop. That’s a 170% rise over its value at the beginning of that year. And just in case you didn’t know, Bitcoin prices had sharply fallen in 2022, with many predicting that it would never get back to these levels again. Courtesy, the collapse of crypto exchange platform FTX and a crisis in the US banking system. So this sudden price rise is something that crypto enthusiasts are celebrating.

But this week Bitcoin shed nearly 10% of its rallying price simply because a financial services firm called Matrixport spread fear that something called the Bitcoin Spot ETF may never be a reality. So we thought of breaking it all down in a story. You can read it here.

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We hope you enjoyed the weekly wrapup. Have a great weekend!

Until then…

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