The Glorious Legacy of Dilip Kumar
In the first 10-15 years after Independence, a troika of male stars ruled Hindi Cinema, namely, Dev Anand, Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar. For many people in our parents’ generation, for reasons our generation never fully understood, Dilip Kumar was the colossus, the first true Bollywood superstar, the original ‘King Khan’. One way to measure […]
Covid-19 and market share gains for the Kings of Capital
Ahead of the Covid-19 related NPAs being made public in the next few months, we first try and simplify the complexity created by the moratorium offered to borrowers, standstill asset classification for lenders and the Supreme Court order on not recognizing NPAs. We further illustrate how the lenders in the Kings of Capital portfolio are […]
Astad Deboo assimilated many forms to create a new language of contemporary dance in India
As the author begins “This is a year of obituaries. And now Astad Deboo is also gone”. Astad Deboo, often referred to as the pioneer of modern dance in India, passed away earlier this week at the age of 73. This piece brings about his contribution to Indian art and the struggles on the way. Deboo, trained […]
Michael Mauboussin: Why Companies Die
The most common pushback we receive from potential investors is that stocks in our portfolio trade at high PE multiples. Our response has been that given the value of a company lies in its cashflows to perpetuity, companies with high longevity of these cashflows indeed have very high intrinsic values – (see our newsletter). In this […]
Everything We’ve Learned About Modern Economic Theory Is Wrong
Economists have been under attack as a profession collectively not least for their failures in predicting or explaining some of the economic events or even the divide over what’s now being referred to as Modern Monetary Theory. And often the criticism seems to come from the field of basic sciences, such as physics. One such theoretical […]
All stars
The digital age characterised by our ability to capture and process vast amounts of data for decision making is helping humanity progress in a multitude of fields. One such area is ‘Complexity science’ – the study of complex systems with several dynamic individual parts and the interaction between them to produce a collective non-linear outcome, […]
The Donut King who went full circle – from rags to riches, twice
We all love to read about linear narratives of zeroes who become heroes. We also love to read about turnaround stories – heroes who fell from grace, picked themselves up and rose again. But until we came across the story Ted Ngoy, a Cambodian refugee to the US, we had never heard about a life […]
Nestlé gives a flavour of the future
Nestle India sits inside the majority of the 4,000-odd portfolios that Marcellus manages for its clients. This Indian subsidiary’s fate is obviously inextricably linked to its 160-year old Swiss parent, Nestle, the world’s largest food company which has been headquartered in Vevey from the day the company was created. Longevity apart, what Nestle has achieved […]
Spotlighting Suprajit Engineering
Unlike their peers, Little Champs portfolio witnessed a healthy recovery in earnings (EBITDA up 14% YoY) in 2QFY21. More importantly, Little Champs’ net cash position has remained intact through 1HFY21 giving them the firepower to gain market shares from their weaker peers. This month we place the spotlight on Suprajit Engineering which has consistently outpaced […]
Amazon’s Panorama box lets firms check if staff follow coronavirus rules
Like most firms, we at Marcellus have also had to adopt Covid-safe measures such as taking additional space to implement social distancing as well as enforcing use of masks by imposing fines that would go to charity. Turns out there is a technological solution for monitoring usage of masks as well. Amazon’s AI based solution […]
Email Lessons from Napoleon Bonaparte
Last week, we featured Cal Newport’s brilliant piece on how email has adversely affected productivity given our constant need to check our inbox. Here’s a productivity tip from the unlikeliest of places – lessons from Napoleon’s way of information management. Mike Schmitz in this blog refers to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous essay on Napoleon: ““He directed Bourrienne […]
Why 2020 has been rotten for quant funds
Quant funds have been pulverised in 2020 because the models that these funds use rely on history. Obviously, nothing akin to Covid-19 has happened in the last hundred years. In fact, both the advent of the disease and the now the discovery of the vaccines seems to have created problems for quant funds. The Economist […]
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