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 […]
Marcellus Portfolio Updates & Insights – April 2026
marcellus.in From Our CIO’s Desk The Case for Multi-Asset Diversification in Volatile Times The ongoing Middle East conflict is a stark reminder that global economies react differently to the same shock. In my recent conversation with Manish Hemnani, we explored why the “old rules” of domestic-only investing must evolve to preserve wealth in this […]
Short read: Your clout is a depreciating asset
The influencer economy is booming. People write blogs on substack or do podcasts to build a following so as to be able to influence them to buying a product or a service or at the least influencing their opinion on a subject which matters to them or someone deploying them. The followers are a measure […]
Short read: Pessimism is the world’s main economic problem
There’s plenty of gloomy thinking in the world today not least because of the ongoing war, as this piece in The Economist published much before the war began, suggests. And this has ramifications for the global economy as people’s thinking tend to be self-fulfilling. “In the late 1970s, as America grappled with an energy […]
Short read: ‘A remarkable time capsule’: The enchanting history of Oxford University’s 750-year-old medieval library
While debate has raged over the past two centuries as to which is the oldest library in the world, there is no doubt that the one at Merton College in Oxford is one of the contenders for the title (although in true British style, Merton College’s librarian, Dr Julia Walworth, downplays such claims to antiquity). […]
Long read: How an Oil Refinery Works
As oil prices continue to soar on the back of the West Asia war, there is plenty of anxiety about how lives of common folks like us get impacted. Given oil’s use in transportation fuel and more ubiquitously plastics amongst a host of other chemicals, it affects all of us. “The world consumes over 100 […]
Long read: Labour unrest exposes deeper economic fault lines
While researching our now bestselling book, “Breakpoint: The Crisis of the Middle Class & The Future of Work”, we realised for those Indians earning at least Rs 5 lakhs per annum the possibility of getting a white-collar office job is heading rapidly towards zero even as cost of living doubles every 8 years or so […]
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