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Reliance Industries buys Future Group, its closest competitor in bricks-and-mortar retailA FEW YEARS ago Future Group was seen as, well, the future of Indian retail. From humble beginnings making trousers in the 1980s, Kishore Biyani, its founder, built 2,000 shops in 400 cities across India, selling all manner of consumer goods. That is second only…

A secretive software-maker says hello to the stockmarket—and goodbye to Silicon Valley“ONE NEVER really knows who one’s enemy is.” The words of Jürgen Habermas, a noted Frankfurt School philosopher, are a good point of departure for understanding Palantir Technologies. On August 25th the controversial software firm, named after a magical orb in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord…

The small Croatian firm’s low volumes belie its ambitionsTHE BUSHY beard sported by Mate Rimac, the 32-year-old founder of a Croatian electric-car-technology firm named after him, long predates lockdown affectation. He is said to have grown it to conceal youthful features that might put off potential customers and partners among the world’s big carmakers, who…

In a few months the Chinese telecoms giant will run out of chips—and optionsTHANKS TO ITS high quality and low prices, Huawei’s telecoms gear is popular around the world. Not in America, where the Chinese giant is banished over (unsubstantiated) fears that it could be used by spies in Beijing to eavesdrop on Americans. But…