The cost of Building Your Dreams, Part II

Akshara· Host0:00

[upbeat music] In today's episode, we'll break down two important stories. First, we'll talk about the cost of building your dreams, part two, and then we'll talk about India's jet fuel problem. Welcome back to the Daily Brief by Zerodha, where we cut through the noise to help you understand what's actually happening in the most important stories from business and markets. If you are listening to this on your commute, on a walk, or at the gym, you can also find the Daily Brief as an audio podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. I'm your host Akshara, and today is Monday, 4th May. Coming to the first story. So a couple of weeks ago, we covered one part of the history of BYD. That part of the story seemed straight out of a movie. Between a founder smashing their own prototype, drinking his own battery fluid, interest from one of the world's greatest investors, multiple near collapses, and a complete switch in the core business, BYD had it all. We ended that story on a cliffhanger when in 2019, BYD was facing its darkest hour. So between 2017 to 2019, profits had fallen consecutively. The subsidies that had sustained China's electric vehicle industry were being cut back sharply, leaving BYD hobbled. On top of that, they were throwing tons of money on R&D that hadn't yet yielded them rewards, and this was all before the pandemic. But then in three years, BYD went from selling fewer cars than a mid-sized regional automaker