Use of fear: Witness protection in India
Whilst there are no prizes for guessing that most of Marcellus’ clients come from the most affluent strata of Indian society, it is actually touching how much faith many of us have in the judicial machinery of the Indian state. Whilst the recent brutality in Hathras might have awakened us city dwellers to the grim […]
HDFC Bank sitting upon $6-7 billion of excess liquidity: Aditya Puri
The outgoing CEO of HDFC Bank and the only one that the bank has had in its 26yr history, Aditya Puri, talks about some of the key issues concerning the bank and the economy in this interview with Nikunj Dalmia in The Economic Times. In line with the digitisation initiatives of the bank in the […]
Social Capital: 2019 Annual Letter
To continue with the theme of big technology monopolies, no better to get the perspective of someone who is a Silicon Valley insider and yet a critic of the monopolist winner takes all industry structure. Chamath Palihapitiya, the founder of venture capital firm, Social Capital, is known for his outspokenness about various issues, in particular […]
The 14 Juiciest Quotes From the House Antitrust Report
The Antitrust Subcommittee of the US Congress published a 400 page report a couple of months ago on the practices that Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon use to deal with competition. Wired has summarised some of the more interesting findings: Amazon: “…in response to the Committee’s request for “a list of the Company’s top ten competitors,” […]
A Century of Rapid Recoveries in Consumption
Whenever the economy is hit by a mega-crisis, consumption proves to be far more robust than most people expect it to be. Furthermore, financially strong, dominant franchises consolidate market share during such crises. And finally, stockmarkets tend to perform well in the decade following major crises. In the opening quarter of CY20, stock markets crashed […]
How Eddie Van Halen transformed Michael Jackson’s Beat It
Eddie Van Halen, the lead guitarist and songwriter of the rock band Van Halen passed away last week, triggering a whole host of tributes from rockheads across the world. Of all the virtues extolled, humility stands out. Eddie’s son Wolfgang Van Halen, named after Mozart, says in a recent interview that “he did not know his […]
Laughter May Be Effective Medicine for These Trying Times
We have been featuring articles about how mental health has become even bigger an issue during the pandemic given increased levels of uncertainty causing stress around health and income and how breathing techniques and eating healthy can improve mental health. This piece in the NYT adds another tool for us – laughter. Laughter clubs have […]
Garry Kasparov on the need to improve our politics with technology
Technology in general and social media in particular have transformed several social sciences in recent times, including politics. Unfortunately much of the transformation has been adverse through extreme polarisation of ideas with little scope for reconciliation and making progress for the common good. In this article by invitation for The Economist, the former world chess […]
The Race for a Super-Antibody Against the Coronavirus
Through the pandemic, we have featured pieces that help us understand what seems to be one of the more complex systems of the human body – the immune system, responsible for producing the antibodies that protect us against infections. It is topical today, whether to understand how easy or not it is produce a vaccine […]
People-meters have a history of manipulation. Huge penetration of Direct-to-Home television offers a solution
TV ad spend amounts to around Rs 27,000 crores per annum (around $4bn). How that cake gets sliced up is driven by TRP ratings which measure the popularity of various programs and hence of the channels which air them. With Mumbai Police in the midst of an investigation regarding the sanctity and reliability of these […]
What made Don Bradman better than the rest?
Most of us are suckers for books and infotainment on how the great & the good made it to the top. Unfortunately, when it comes to cricket, the greatest cricketer of all time finished playing 70 years ago. Hence it is impossible for us to truly understand why & how Aussie legend Don Bradman scored […]
India’s Kings of Capital – Part III: Aditya Puri
While we focused on the capital allocation skills of Uday Kotak (click here to read) and Deepak Parekh (click here to read) in our preceding pieces in this series, the genius of Aditya Puri lies in the fact that there have been no miraculous moments, no solitary lucky break or grand transition programs which have led to […]
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