Short read: Jaspal Bhatti would be an ‘anti-national’ today — satirist who always punched up, not down
Those of us in Marcellus who grew up in the 1980s watching Doordarshan, find it hard to get to forget Jaspal Bhatti, not least for his satire of the IPO market of that era immortalised in this video of the mythical PP Waterballs IPO – see here. Tina Das of The Print reminisces about the […]
Short read: Never mind your children’s screen time. Worry about your parents’
At a recent Diwali family gathering, it was gut-wrenching to see one’s septuagenarian uncles and aunts who once enjoyed their banter in the real world, hooked on to their screens, doom scrolling on a short video app. As the subject of this piece suggests, some of us have been struggling to control our kids’ screen […]
Short read: ‘Scamlands’: How India became the frontline of global fraud
Scams are not new. But whilst digitisation has brought in unparalleled transformation especially with financial inclusion, it has also resulted in financial fraud becoming rampant in India that many of us have been victims of, but few acknowledge. That in itself is sometimes the safety net for a fraudster. Snigdha Poonam whose first book‘Dreamers’ told […]
Long read: Never Bet Against America
By the time this hits your inbox, we may have heard more about the US-China trade deal as the leaders of two countries parley in Busan, South Korea. But the popular opinion for now is that China is winning the trade war as seen with the multiple rollbacks from Trump and most recently China flexing […]
Long read: The Coming Entropy Of Our World Order
Parag Khanna is a popular speaker in the conference circuit in Asia’s major financial centres. In this piece, he shares his take on what sort of world will emerge in the wake of America’s decline as a great power. He begins by saying that we should NOT use the present or the post-World War II […]
Long read: A 6-year research project found a surprisingly simple route to happiness
For over a decade now, a cottage industry has been built around researching what makes human beings happy. Plenty has been written on this subject and we at Marcellus have contributed our two cents to this body of work through our 2020 bestseller “The Victory Project: Six Steps to Peak Potential”. However, this piece in […]
The Long Awaited Policy Response is Here
The employment, wages and consumption slowdown that has played out in India post-Covid has now been recognised by India’s policymakers. Whilst their policy response has been substantive (especially with regards to boosting consumption, the mainstay of India’s economic growth), the structural issue of helping middle class India deal with a massive labour market transition – […]
Marcellus’ Portfolio Updates & Insights – October 2025
marcellus.in From Our CIO’s Desk India’s 5-layered Consumer Stimulus; More Needed After a five-year flirtation with boosting public capex, the Government of India is now focusing on the main engine of India’s economic growth: Consumption. The last 6 months have seen the announcement of a 5-layered boost for domestic consumption including the keenly awaited GST […]
Long read: Lessons from the Wall Street crash of 1929
This is a timely book as more and more paranoid voices bring up the comparison of the current market exuberance with the ‘Roaring 20s’ referring to the stock market boom of the 1920s, culminating in the crash in 1929 leading to the Great Depression. Andrew Ross Sorkin, a journalist with the New York Times, known […]
Short read: ‘Their resilience is a lesson to us all’: The maritime lions hunting seals on the beach
From our primary school days, we are taught that the lion is the apex predator. However, we are rarely taught how hard the lions work to ensure that their apex position sustains. Nor are we told just how adaptable these intelligent and hardworking animals are. Isabelle Gerretsen’s article will help you catch-up on the things […]
Short read: Her Right
Our 2024 bestseller “Behold the Leviathan: The Unusual Rise of Modern” celebrates the rise of Indian women who in many walks of life are leaving their male counterparts far behind. In a conservative society, we expect to see this female ascendancy trigger a male backlash as a beleaguered patriarchy seeks to hold women back. An […]
Long read: The World in Which We Live
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, formerly an options trader, shot to fame as an author with his book ‘Black Swan’ published in 2007, just before the global financial crisis, a black swan event in itself. His other books Fooled by Randomness, Antifragile and Skin in the Game are must-reads as well. This piece is a transcript of […]
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