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 […]
‘The Victory Project’ by Saurabh Mukherje
Elon Musk’s 2 Rules For Learning Anything Faster
Two weeks ago, we featured a piece on using the T-model to build our individual capabilities – a combination of a wide and diverse array of interests represented by the horizontal bar of the letter T coupled with deep specialisation (the veritcal bar) in a specific field that draws upon on the insights from various fields. The author […]
Shareholder value isn’t past its sell-by date as a corporate goal
We featured a piece a couple of weeks ago, reigniting the debate on whether the sole purpose of a corporate is to maximise shareholder value like Friedman brought to believe in his now famous essay 50years ago or to deliver value to all stakeholders – workers, suppliers, environment and the society at large. In this […]
The Best Way to Compete with Big Companies: Do Nothing
There are growing concerns on how the global economy is getting concentrated into the hands of a few large technology companies, where the big are getting bigger and rapidly expanding into far flung domains. Here’s a story of how a small company can stand up to its larger competitor and win by simply focusing on […]
Inside the airline industry’s meltdown
The airline industry despite the crucial role it plays in connecting the global economy, is notorious for destroying value. Even the relatively young Indian private airline industry has seen almost all airlines either go bankrupt or shutdown with two of the three major players left standing are on the brink, the financials of the dominant […]
I stopped using screens on Sundays. This is how it changed my life
The author says that after an episode of seizure & fainting in 2019 she decided to slow down her life. She reduced her phone usage but inspite of that the stats on her phone told her that her weekly usage time wasn’t coming down: “I turned off my notifications years ago; my phone doesn’t join me […]
What Warren Buffett sees in Japan Inc
In late September, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway invested $6.5bn in five Japanese trading houses that are well over a century old. “Berkshire’s investment in 5% each of Itochu, Marubeni, Mitsubishi, Mitsui and Sumitomo, though small relative to his investment firm’s $140bn mound of cash, was its biggest outside America. It said its stakes could increase […]
Spotlighting V-Mart Retail
This month we place the spotlight on another portfolio company, V-Mart Retail, the largest affordable fashion apparel retailer in tier 2, 3 and tier 4 cities of the north-eastern Hindi heartland. V-Mart commands one of the best RoCEs in Indian retail (pre-tax average RoCE of 28% over FY17-20) and has delivered net earnings CAGR of […]
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