Apparently the Indian GST for premium tickets went from 12% to 18% fairly recently. But I was pricing out ex-DEL RTWs last year around November and it wasn't price competitive.

This again assumes similar positioning costs. I live in Tokyo so my ex-TYO positioning is zero. But ex-DEL gave me the luxury of 2x TYO stopovers which I can't have on ex-TYO. ex-KTM is cheaper than ex-India or Pakistan once the luxury taxes are figured in, that one makes more sense if you don't mind MH, UL, or CX coded flights in and out of KTM, but you can't get a JL, QR, etc. codeshare if crediting to AA, so miles left on the table that could end up making the slightly higher price of ex-India or ex-Japan for AA crediting. I was looking at this right after the attacks in Nepal from protesters, but I think that has normalized again now. For those needing TYO stopovers on an Asia origin RTW, ex-CMB also isn't terrible, but IIRC it is still a bit higher in the final price than ex-India, but again if you can get cheap positioning then can still be considered.

Within Asia there are several good starting points, but the strengths and weaknesses will depend on where you are crediting and your positioning costs. Crediting to programs that are more uniform in D class earnings become more neutral, but crediting to AA, AY, or QR, the differences are far more apparent and might be worth a few extra $$ to start in one vs. the other.

If you can get to JNB / CPT / DUR cheaply, it's also a great starting point that can be optimized for many OW programs. OSL is quite good too, and flexible even for AA, QR, AY earners, but you have to watch the YQ/YR effects more than the others. Choosing optimal codeshares seems to be fairly important there, plus some of the best better intra-continental routes are within the 'Europe' zone (DOH-CMN, DOH-LIS, DOH-DUB, etc.) and you eat up 2x of your allowed 4x segments getting to / from OSL, so it's not my preferred starting point.