Long read: The Mathematical Reason Most People Never “Make It”
In any given field, there are several of us who put in the hard yards. Yet only a handful get the desired outcomes. The rest of us just blame our luck and feel disheartened. Whilst luck does play a role in most outcomes, here’s a more positive way of looking at things. Kaguura Gichuru uses […]
Long read: The life of Puja: How a young woman from rural Bengal became an internet star
Sitting in the United Kingdom, Charles Foster has nailed down a universal truth. In the Bengal countryside, a young village dweller in East Midnapore named Pujarani Pradhan is practicing living on the edge with great success. Her prowess in describing her middle class, rural life in Bengal has made her a social media celebrity whose […]
Long read: Embrace the edge!
This essay from Charles Foster – a writer and a fellow of Exeter College, University of Oxford, a barrister, a part-time judge of the Crown Court, and a veterinary surgeon – is as illuminating as it is life-affirming. The essay helps those of us have spent our lives eschewing mainstream choices – in where we […]
Foreign ESOPs: Valuable, Illiquid, Tax-Inefficient & Tricky
Summary: The quantum of ESOPs held by Indians in foreign companies is orders of magnitude larger than ESOPs held in desi companies. And yet, this is a mixed blessing because foreign ESOPs are illiquid, tax-inefficient and tricky to manage. Marcellus recommends 3 simple steps which can help Indians make the most of these stock options: (1) Move portfolio […]
Short read: Why Your Best Ideas Aren’t Original
David Epstein, the author of the brilliant book Range which talked about why generalists are more likely to succeed, has published his new book – Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better. This blog which is an adaptation from the book talks about why our best ideas don’t necessarily have to be original and why framing is the key to […]
Short read: Remembering Raghu Rai: The photographer who showed India to itself
In the 1980s and 1990s, as many of us in Marcellus were trying to make sense of the country we lived in, we encountered Raghu Rai’s photographs. Each picture seemed to open a window for us into an India which we did not know and hadn’t encountered in our teenage lives. Mr Rai’s pictures of […]
Short read: India has splurged billions on metro trains. But where are the commuters?
As we travel across India on business trips, we see airports and metro train networks in small cities. While the airports are welcome, they often seem to carry little traffic. Similarly, most of the metro trains we see in the smaller cities are empty and we ask our other colleagues in Marcellus whether cities like […]
Long read: The world’s most complex machine
In a recent trip to China, we were stunned by the technological progress there to the extent they are world leaders already in most areas or soon catching up with the west in others. Yet, there is one technology that has been elusive for the Chinese to crack – Extreme UltraViolet (EUV) Lithography, a rare […]
Long read: AI isn’t coming for your job. It’s coming for your mind
If your kids or graduate recruits involved in knowledge work use AI, you might want to read this. Not because AI use is bad but a passive use of AI can have detrimental effects on cognitive abilities of the young who haven’t yet had the opportunity to go through the struggles to build foundational expertise/skills […]
Long read: Does reading do us any good?
We often encounter people who believe reading books is a waste of time. Sometimes these are powerful people who implicitly tell us that “Look at me. Look what I have achieved without reading.” Given that many readers tend to be introverted, intellectual types, the prevailing atmosphere in capital markets across the world for several decades now has […]
Parents Are Dipping Deep into Their Retirement Savings to Pay for their Kids’ Education
Summary: With 1.3 million Indians studying at Western universities, India leads the world in sending its kids to study abroad . While you would expect that of the world’s most populous nation, what is unexpected is the level of financial stress that Indian parents are bearing to finance their children’s dreams of a better life. Most Indian parents […]
A Quadruple Shock to the Cost of Living
While the rising price of Brent crude features prominently in media reports, there are 3 other less reported inflationary shocks moving towards the Indian economy – the rising cost of imports, the soaring cost of edible oils and the likelihood of a poor monsoon – which are capable of delivering a punch as powerful as […]
For more content on our strategy, visit the archives GO TO ARCHIVES