On Episode 828 of The Core Report, financial journalist Govindraj Ethiraj talks to Ankit Hakhu, Director at Crisil Ratings as well as Manisha Kapoor, CEO at The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI).

SHOW NOTES

(00:00) The Take

(05:00) Oil prices set to spike and markets fall as the United States gets set for fresh attack on Iran

(07:34) The rupee has another bad day and it could get worse.

(08:40) India is doing well on renewable energy capacity but there is a problem.

(17:42) How Gen Alpha’s cultural codes, aesthetics and language are globally synchronised, but largely invisible to adults

Register for our event “Who Builds the Future of AI?”

https://luma.com/x6oyyjiz

NOTE: This transcript contains the host's monologue and includes interview transcripts by a machine. Human eyes have gone through the script but there might still be errors in some of the text, so please refer to the audio in case you need to clarify any part. If you want to get in touch regarding any feedback, you can drop us a message on feedback@thecore.in.

—

Good morning, it's Monday the 23rd of March and this is Govindraj Ethiraj broadcasting and streaming weekdays from Mumbai, India's financial capital.

The Take

An energy crisis is now upon us and the hard truth is that it will get worse in coming weeks and months before and if it gets better. We're no longer dealing in theoretical scenarios.

A structured energy reset has been forced upon the country, compelling a painful reduction in consumption alongside an abrupt and highly disruptive fuel shift, for instance, to kerosene and firewood. Now, as we navigate this difficult period, we must also realise that the ultimate solution will not come from short-term subsidies or geopolitical successes like getting a few more ships through the state of Hormuz. It will come from actual homegrown engineering.

That is why the work of state-backed institutions like the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, CSIR, and scientists like Dr. Ashish Lele has suddenly become a matter of paramount national and economic security. Last week on the Core Report, I spoke with Dr. Lele who directs the National Chemical Laboratory in Pune. The NCL is a critical node in CSIR's sprawling network which encompasses 37 national laboratories, 39 outreach centres, one innovation complex, and three units.

With some 3,500 scientists and 4,000 technical and support personnel, the CSIR quietly drives research ranging from oceanography and genomics to aeronautics and, crucially, energy. Dr. Lele and his team are currently testing a gas known as dimethyl ether, DME, a compound that holds the potential to drastically reduce India's heavy reliance on imported liquefied petroleum gas. The underlying technology is relatively elegant.

As Dr. Lele describes, it requires only one or two reactors and a distillation column and is thus significantly simpler than standard refinery operations. The team's pilot project is currently operating around 250 kilogrammes a day and the next critical technological milestone is a demonstration plant which Dr. Lele notes could be operational within six months once funded. Now, moving to full commercial production where DME could substitute LPG at a macroeconomic scale is the inevitable next step but will also require considerable capital expenditure mostly from or likely from major oil marketing companies utilising traditional supply chains.

However, India is not strictly bound to centralised corporate production. According to Dr. Lele, India could leverage its abundant decentralised woody biomass by gasifying this biomass into syngas, converting it into methyl and finally to DME, India could localise its fuel supply. While the exact market readiness and affordability of this model or all these models are still to be mapped out, the technology is clearly within reach but it also highlights a much larger structural reality.

We cannot expect private capital to fund or even care about this kind of long-term foundational research. Private markets are excellent at scaling proven innovations but notoriously poor at incubating them. Furthermore, we can no longer look to the west for a steady pipeline of technological miracles.

The United States, traditionally the world's primary engine for research and innovation, has drastically cut back on research funding across the board, axing entire scientific departments altogether in the last year and of course, as we know, has launched a new war. India faces a deeply unique set of challenges in its energy mix. Our renewable energy production has accelerated dramatically but the absence of grid-scale storage technology means the sun and wind cannot serve us 24 hours a day to say nothing of our ongoing power evacuation hurdles and more on them shortly.

We desperately need more home-grown fuels and innovations. Dr. Lele's work on cooking gas, a fuel integral to millions of Indian households and commercial kitchens, is just one piece of the puzzle. A few weeks ago, Engineers India Ltd Chairperson Vartika Shukla told me about a project her team was immensely proud of, engineering a cheaper, lighter and more user-friendly solar cooker.

It is a striking juxtaposition. EIL is an institution that helps design nuclear reactors and mega refineries and yet simultaneously applying its vast engineering prowess to solve grassroots energy challenges for the everyday consumer. So whether it is synthesising entirely new fuels or innovating the basic implements powered by them, the energy crisis of 2026 is delivering a blunt lesson.

To secure our economic future, we must stay deeply invested in and rapidly expand our own scientific and industrial capacity.

And that brings us to our top stories and themes.

Oil prices are set to spike and markets fall in the coming week.

The rupee has another bad day last week and it could get worse.

India is doing well on renewable energy capacity but there is a catch.

How Gen Alpha's cultural codes, aesthetics and language are globally synchronised but largely invisible to adults and what that means.

Markets

This is a holiday shortened trading week with markets closed on Thursday for Ram Navami but the warmongers will be working right through undoubtedly. Over the weekend, US President Donald Trump threatened to attack Iran's energy installations if it did not open up the Strait of Hormuz. Almost a day before that, he extracted a promise from Israel not to further attack Iranian energy infrastructure, an effort the United States most likely participated in.

And now the threat is back and the joke is of course on everyone else. Remember, American boots are set to land on ground in and around the state of Hormuz between today and tomorrow and the war is set to intensify further. This of course comes despite several promises of boots not landing on ground but we of course know better now.

Iran has already promised on Sunday to attack energy infrastructure across the region if Trump carries through with his promise. Given the events of the last few weeks, we can rest assured all parties will do exactly as they say and promise. The only difference perhaps is that Trump usually tries a slate of hand 12-24 hours before an actual attack by saying things like, the US will wind down this war.

So if all goes as per plan, that is America's plan, expect oil prices to jump today and other collateral damage to set in, the scale of which is a little difficult to compound right now because we don't know how deep or far this could go, that is, this week. The Indian markets had barely recovered on Friday and were on course for a stronger close till reports of fresh bombing surfaced. The Nifty 50 ended 112 points higher on 23,114 and the Sensex was up 325 points to close at 74,532.

The broader markets also closed higher but having lost out during the day, the Nifty mid-cap and small-cap indices were up 0.6 and 0.09% up. As things stand, we are headed for considerable volatility and a in the markets this week. Meanwhile, a Bloomberg report said Indian refiners plan to resume buying Iranian oil while refiners elsewhere in Asia are examining such a move after the United States temporarily removed sanctions to alleviate an energy crunch caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran, traders said on Saturday.

Three Indian refining sources told Bloomberg they would buy Iranian oil and were awaiting government directions and clarity from Washington on details like The state of Armaz is now closed effectively for the fourth week as conflict continues and is of course putting pressure on the US administration and on major importers of oil, gas and fuels from the Persian Gulf. The US may have lots of oil as President Trump has boasted as well but prices are determined globally and high prices in West Asia will affect everyone.

Rupee

The rupee has fallen past 93 per dollar for the first time on Friday and logged its worst single day drop in over four years.

It fell more than a percent to Rs. 93.73 against the dollar, past its previous record of Rs. 92.63 touched only on Wednesday and finally closed at Rs.

93.71 and was down about 1.3% for the week, the steepest decline since late 2022, according to Reuters. Foreign investors have now pulled out more than $8 billion from Indian equities this month, which is the largest outflow since January 2025. For whatever one may say about valuations and whether they are stretched or not, clearly foreign investors are selling at every sign of trouble anywhere in the world.

So the rupee now has depreciated about 8% against the dollar over the last year and has also weakened against the euro, the pound and the Chinese yuan. There is nothing to say that the rupee will not depreciate further at this point.

India and Energy

India is facing an energy crisis which will get worse.

What are the options? While there has been discussion on renewable energy sources filling the gaps, it will take time and there is a catch. A quick background. The share of thermal energy in power generation is now dropping below 70% in the coming year thanks to slower growth in power demand and a surge in renewable energy generation.

Now these figures of course were computed before the current crisis but at this point there is about 200 gigawatts of installed solar and wind capacities as of February 2026. A new report from CRISIL says rising renewable energy capacity addition amidst slower deployment of transmission infrastructure poses a risk of grid curtailment for more than 35 gigawatts of capacity in the current financial year because of lack of long-term grid access. What does this mean and how will it affect overall energy scenarios? By way of background, there are two kinds of network access.

Long-term general network access and temporary general network access. Now long-term projects have dedicated transmission infrastructure, multi-year access to the grid and stronger scheduling rights. Temporary access projects on the other hand are partially commissioned or do not have dedicated transmission infrastructure and hence face higher risk of curtailment.

All this of course gives you some of the structural issues involved in the power generation transmission and distribution sector. I reached out to Ankit Hakhu, Director at CRISIL and author of this report and I began by asking him to describe the overall situation right now.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Ankit Hakhu: A very pertinent question in the context of renewable energy development in India. At this juncture, we have reached renewable capacity and by renewable I mean solar and wind. Although there are other clean energy sources, but I am focussing my attention on solar and wind.

At this juncture, we have reached close to 200 odd gigawatt of capacity distributed largely between these two sources. 70-75% would be solar out of this 200 gigawatt and the rest is wind. The primary growth in renewable has been because of the government's push to beat its clean energy targets towards its journey of becoming net zero country.

And there is a target of reaching 500 odd gigawatt of non-fossil energy by 2030. And a large part of this non-fossil would be formed by solar and wind energy capacity. So to reach that 450 odd gigawatt, I'm estimating that out of 500 odd gigawatt of non-fossil, nearly 450 odd gigawatt would be solar and wind.

And to reach that destination is where we are seeing a large amount of readings, auctions happening in the renewable energy space in the country. We started off primarily by developing more of wind. And I'm talking about say 6-7 years back, 7-8 years back.

And then we gradually moved towards solar as the crisis of solar fan. And we then saw that a large amount of solar installations started to take place. Now the question comes in on which we have come out with our report, which is the issue of curtailment.

The issue of curtailment is arising because now you have solar primarily reaching a significant level of footprint in the overall power generation space in the country. The peculiarity with solar is that it produces mainly during the daytime and pumps in the power into the grid. But the grid does not function according to when the generation sources are actually supplying power.

The grid has its own nuances. It has to balance the demand against the supply. And the demand requirements on the grid, they largely come during the peak times, which are in the evening times.

Unfortunately, because of the absence of solar, irradiation is absent if you do not store it. So that is where the issue is coming that you are producing power during a certain period in the day and you have a requirement during the other times of the day. So which means that you have to balance it.

That is the crux of the problem. The other problem is that because of the rapid development that has happened on the solar and wind side, primarily towards the solar side, your grid also needs to rapidly develop to evacuate that kind of power. And this development, because of the generation potential, is high in some of the states in the country.

And it is not that it is secular. You are having more irradiation potential in states like Rajasthan and Gujarat. That is where most of the development is happening.

That is where also that you have to evacuate most of the power from. And the transmission lines are being laid out to evacuate that kind of power. This issue is what I would say are the growing pains in the public sector.

There are these two segments. One segment is growing rapidly and has a much shorter gestation period to commission solar capacities. They have the ability to commission within six to eight months.

If you have all these sources in place, you have raw material in place, you can actually put up that capacity. But to lay out a transmission line, and especially a transmission line, which is interstate, where you evacuate power from one state and you feed it into the other state where the requirements are, it has to cross multiple geographies. So right-of-way issues, land access issues, they all come in.

And building a transmission line, commissioning it is a much longer period.

Govindraj Ethiraj: Yeah. So your report talks of a 35 gigawatt curtailment as the need of the hour. What does that mean?

Does that mean that that's the transmission capacity that we're lacking at this point, particularly from these states where it's being generated? This is slightly more nuanced.

Ankit Hakhu: The crux of the matter is that you do not have an adequate evacuation capacity to evacuate all the capacity which is generating. So you are telling certain capacities which are on a temporary access to the grid, you are deprioritizing them, and you are saying that please do not produce power during the daytime, the grid will not be able to take it. Yes, it indirectly means that you do not have sufficient capacity to evacuate.

But the problem is also compounded because of the concentration of the capacities within a certain regions, and you have to evacuate all that capacities which you are not able to do at this point in time. Having said that, the transmission capacities are also being built. In fact, there is a dedicated scheme of the government.

The plan is to build certain high voltage lines to evacuate power. There are two schemes, 66 gigawatt and 180 gigawatt evacuation schemes, which are spread across regions and work is happening over there. These are two separate activities which are happening parallelly and one is coming before the others.

Govindraj Ethiraj: And you also said that this obviously can affect the financials of projects or renewable projects which are either coming up or already have come up.

Ankit Hakhu: Yes, so what we have said is that projects which are having temporary network access and do not have a long term network access, which means that they can be deprioritized during the daytime, and indirectly it means that they would not be able to run at their full potential. There is some kind of an impact which will happen on the IRRs or the debt service coverage ratios if the credit investors are looking at these projects. It's very difficult to actually say that till what period of time these projects will continue to face curtailment.

If the lines come in faster, they would be able to actually get the access and would go on a long term network access so their curtailments will go down. But the time they do not get it, yes, there is this kind of impact that we see.

Govindraj Ethiraj: And what's your sense in a somewhat approximate way of the pace at which we are adding transmission capacity? Because you earlier talked about the generation capacity that we are adding and the 400 gigawatt target. I mean, how are we in terms of the pace of transmission and where will it converge if so?

Ankit Hakhu: So as I mentioned earlier, these are teething issues, growing pains, but it's not a dead end that we see. We do see that India should be able to actually match or synchronise the generation and the evacuation. In what we believe is that nearly 60 to 80 gigawatt of evacuation capacities are currently underway.

They come on time. In the next three years or so, this situation should get balanced. But these are complicated issues because there are a number of approvals, land access requirements which are there.

So these things we are monitoring. But we feel that these are issues which would be there for the next three to four years. Right.

Govindraj Ethiraj: Ankit, thank you so much for joining me.

Ankit Hakhu: Thank you, Govind. Pleasure speaking with you.

Looking out for Gen Alpha

Gen Alpha's cultural codes, aesthetics and language are globally synchronised but largely invisible to adults. For this generation, online and offline are not two worlds but one. The phone is not a device but where they live their lives.

A new study and survey by the Mumbai Headquartered Advertising Standards Council of India or ASCII has revealed. The report says that younger children that 7 to 12 can spot overt advertisements but miss hidden commercial intent. Older children 13 to 15 are more ad-literate but remain vulnerable to passion-driven and narrative integrated brand messaging.

The study also talks about and calls for principle-based ecosystem-wide response involving platforms, creators, advertisers, parents, schools to ensure a responsible approach to marketing to Gen Alpha. There are of course deeper questions in what the survey finds and how adults including parents need to understand and respond if they can. I reached out to Manisha Kapoor, CEO of ASCI and I began by asking her how she was reading the survey's key findings.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Manisha Kapoor: Yeah, so there are a few kind of key themes that emerged out of this study. The first one was really about this generation being a little bit discontinuous and while every generation feels that you know the next one there is a big gap and you know do they know what they are doing and you know so that gap is there between every generation but I think the difference between this and even a Gen Z is that for this generation they are living their lives inside the internet. They are socialising, they are learning, they are making friends, they are feeling entertained, they get a sense of belonging.

All of that is happening in the online world and unlike I think the previous generations that visit the online space, this generation seems to be residing inside it. For them it is pretty much their social surround, like I said I mean almost any activity that they do is mediated within the internet and that therefore becomes a more than proportionate influence on their lives. They are learning things from the internet perhaps more than they are learning things from their parents or the previous generation and their sources of information and influence are global in nature.

In that sense you know this is a generation perhaps which has not received in as much quantum the culture of the earlier generation which used to be passed on through lessons you know or even how you live everyday life. The children pick that up and that is part of how culture moves from one generation to the other and here from a very very early age we see that there is almost a global kind of influence on these children and therefore it's probably a little bit more discontinuous as a generation when compared to earlier generation gaps.

Govindraj Ethiraj: Yeah and I'll come to parents and the role of parents because your report has spent quite some time on this and quite exhaustively but what does this mean at this point for advertisers and those who are trying to you know essentially either build brands or sell a product and so on?

Manisha Kapoor: So I think one of the things that advertisers need to look at is that all of us look at this generation with an adult gaze but this generation looks at itself in a very different way. So if the idea is to connect with this generation then I think it is important to immerse ourselves in their world which is extremely different from even the previous generation and you know what they find meaning in and one of the things the study you know really talks about is exactly you know how this generation is kind of behaving, how you know they are kind of working out you know things that work for them etc. So I think that's really interesting and something to think about in terms of just how this generation behaves vis-a-vis the other one.

Govindraj Ethiraj: And what does that mean? So for example let's say if this target group and as they grow I'm assuming their habits and their behaviour will be roughly similar they are not likely to be influenced by traditional advertising and are more likely to go with maybe influencers. What are the other shifts of that nature that you see or are projecting?

Manisha Kapoor: So one of the interesting things that the study did was also understand the relationship that kids have with brands and for them brands appear and brands and advertising I think when they appear in very overt ways don't seem to interest them. So you know the announcement manner of advertising that used to exist in the past is something that they clearly see as an interruption to what they actually want to consume which is content. And the challenge is however that when advertising is embedded in content so it could be a part of the game they are playing or it could be an influencer who is passionate about a topic and talking about a brand which you know matches that kind of environment they don't seem to recognise that as advertising at all and that is a little bit of a risk as far as brands are concerned and as far as advertising is concerned. The other thing is that they are quite looking at brands in a way that meets their vibe you know so what are the brands that they associate with is a brand that meets their vibe in the moment and they are in a sense almost employing brands to meet their vibe and that's an interesting way in which they relate with brands. In some cases the brands that they relate with are you know brands which for example extremely premium you know they could be talking of a Lamborghini but they have an understanding of that brand in the context of their own lives.

So they are consuming these brands in a way that is not necessarily going to lead to actual consumption or you know physical consumption or you know an actual purchase but they are associating these brands with different vibes. It doesn't have to be a premium brand or a mass brand I mean if at that moment it kind of you know meets the vibe that they are into it could be a 10 rupee shoe or a you know very high-end shoe it kind of works for them. So like I said they are using brands to fulfil their needs and their vibe at the moment I mean that's the relationship they seem to be having with brands.

Govindraj Ethiraj: So one of the themes that you've talked about in the report is blurred ad recognition and you say that older children 13 to 15 have developed greater ad literacy yet remain susceptible to passion-driven and narrative integrated brand messaging. So it's not clear to me is some of it good or is this a concern?

Manisha Kapoor: No it is a concern. So for example if there's an influence who usually talks about let's say cars and so long as that influencer continues to talk of cars but introduces a brand which could be a paid promotion these kids are not able to identify that because they seem to think that it comes from the passion of that person who is anyway talking about the subject. But let's say if that person starts talking about shoes then they will kind of recognise it okay that someone must have paid him or her to speak about shoes because that doesn't seem to be integrated you know very seamlessly into what they know of that content creator otherwise that you know this is a person passionate about cars.

So when it is integrated really into the passion that they know the influencer for the you know the recognition is poor even in older kids. For younger kids it's only very very overt kind of advertising that they are able to recognise so this is certainly it's a concern again when things are embedded into games you know you could have a game and let's say they're playing a game and some products make an appearance is that branded or not they would really have no way of knowing unless it was made very very clear. So I think those are the concerns that you know are there around advertising literacy both for younger and older kids.

Govindraj Ethiraj: Right this report was launched at this ASCII ad trust summit which concluded a few days ago. So what's the reaction from some of the top advertisers who attended I mean how are they digesting this all of this?

Manisha Kapoor: I think all of us are taking some time to digest this because it's a fairly I mean interesting area for all of us to navigate and really try understand what is happening in the life of kids which is perhaps so different from our own lives that you know it's not necessarily you know easy to comprehend it at the first go. So I think that's what's really happening. I think humility to kind of really try and understand what this generation is about and we perhaps don't have the answers.

I think the other is a little bit of anxiety causing because again I feel like various generations we don't necessarily understand the next one and in this case it seems to be a little bit more complicated even than understanding the next generation. So I think the idea is to just explore a little bit more but also try and bring in you know different kinds of voices when it comes to let's say civil society looking at this young generation. It's looking at you know people who work in the kids area.

So I think it's something which we need to explore as a larger ecosystem and of course advertisers and the advertising ecosystem need to kind of take a look at it and see what implications it has for them.

Govindraj Ethiraj: Right, last question. So you know you've talked about how the algorithm has essentially substituted parents and teachers and you've spent or rather report spends quite some time focussing on this aspect. I mean the role of parents and how do they respond to this.

So obviously there is no straight answer to this and that answer itself will keep changing. So what's your sense today at least in the context of findings of this report in terms of how parents should be or even teachers should be navigating this world.

Manisha Kapoor: I think the question of you know advertising and content when it comes to kids. I feel that even for parents it's quite difficult to navigate because you know it's something that they have very little idea about and while they you know from an intent point of view try and do a lot of things. They try and regulate screen time, they try and understand what content their kids are watching.

But what the study also reveals is the content that kids are watching can appear so bizarre to parents that there is very little understanding of what they're doing. So you know while the intent may be there and they may be taking some actions but how do you explain a six seven, how do you explain you know games that they are into, how do you explain their fascination for horror as a genre which the parents themselves may not be interested in. So I think it's not so easy and while I feel a lot of people in general in society says you know parents must take responsibility.

The fact is that parents are also very overwhelmed and I don't think that we can shift the entire burden of bringing up this generation with just the parents. So schools have a role, parents have a role but importantly also I think people in the advertising and media industry you know must build on advertising literacy, must build on media literacy you know both for parents and for kids you know. So I think that's like super critical and also how do we build in perhaps universal signposting.

Today a lot of commercial content is you know made apparent through disclosures. Now do kids understand disclosures? Does the disclosure need to be in a manner that is a more universal way of understanding that this is commercial content than having a written disclosure?

I think these are questions we need to ask and then answer as an ecosystem. You know there's a role of platforms. A lot of platforms have parental controls that could give some agency to the parents in terms of curating or putting some guardrails around content.

But how many parents know that you can do that? Are they aware of things like parental control? Are they aware of the implications of each of the system settings that they can do?

And I think there are some big gaps there. Unfortunately again one of those things where we can't say that you do this one thing and you know the issue gets sorted. It is you know unfortunately again one of those things where everyone must step forward and you know play their part in bringing up the next generation.

Govindraj Ethiraj: Wonderful. Thank you so much Manisha for joining me.

Manisha Kapoor: Thanks Govind.