AI and the Big Five
Artificial intelligence in general and ChatGPT of OpenAI in particular is likely to go down as one of the big technological breakthroughs of 2022 along with fusion energy. It will take a long while for us to fully appreciate the gamut of applications for artificial intelligence and machine learning as well as the economic implications. […]
How to become wise
In India, we know very little about Korean philosophy inspite of the ubiquity of Korean products (cars, consumer durables, music, cosmetics, etc) in our lives. This insightful essay by Kevin Cawley, senior lecturer in Korean Studies at University College Cork and director of the Irish Institute of Korean Studies, therefore acts almost as a Korean […]
What is a Super App?
Over the past year, a couple of Indian conglomerates launched their ‘super apps’. Going into the launch, the hype was intense. After the launch, the success of these Indian super apps was modest at best. So what are super apps? And why is it that other than in China, they have not really worked in […]
MeritorQ: The Power of Checklists
Most of us have used a checklist at some point. Humans need checklists because most of us have imperfect recall. Checklists provide a cognitive safety net. They prevent us from having to suffer due to our flaws —flaws of memory, attention, and thoroughness. Checklists have been found to be effective in performing complex tasks in varied […]
The Hidden Cost of Cheap TVs
This remarkable chart shows how amongst various goods and services, TVs have become the most affordable over the past two decades – down 97%. The article goes on to explain why. Ofcourse, technological developments and economies of scale akin to the Moore’s law has helped reduce the cost of making a TV but there are hidden costs […]
What Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul can learn from Suryakumar Yadav? Be natural, show courage, and smile often
Just as the rise of computing power in the 1970s made stockmarkets more efficient over the next decade, the application of computing power to cricket over the past decade has made the game far more competitive. Coaches and data analysts now analyse the opposition’s skillsets in microscopic detail and strategise accordingly. In such a world, […]
The Story behind Corporate Bad Loans: Dubious Assessment, Rampant Diversion of Funds and Meaningless Guarantees
The market’s memory tends to be short as seen with the sharp rally in shares of many banks who until recently were saddled with a broken balance sheet thanks to the RBI under the Governorship of Raghuram Rajan forcing them to recognise bad loans. Last week’s high profile arrests of a former bank CEO and […]
How Putin’s technocrats saved the economy to fight a war they opposed
The Russian economy has surprisingly withstood the extreme pain from western sanctions, largely thanks to its energy exports but as this article suggests, also credit to the technocrats who stayed back to run the economy despite opposing the war. The article also seems to credit Vladmir Putin for having backed these technocrats despite their position […]
Salmon Sushi isn’t a Japanese invention
For those amongst us who have discovered sushi over the past 20 years it may come as a surprise to know that salmon sushi was almost unheard of in the previous century. It took a decade long marketing campaign from the Norwegians to convince the Japanese that salmon wasn’t a “garbage fish” and that it […]
Public to Private Equity in the United States: A Long-Term Look
The Christmas break gave us an opportunity to revisit a two-year old Michael Mauboussin paper which focuses on using 30 years of US data to highlight the stark (and counterintuitive) differences between Venture Capital (VC), Private Equity (PE) and public market investing. If you work in the financial markets or are investing your hard earned […]
Divis: Greatness in Indian Pharma
It is rare to find an Indian pharma company which makes systematic investments towards building the customer’s trust, improving compliance and ramping up manufacturing efficiency. Divis Labs is one such company that has delivered on these fronts for almost three decades. It has been the preferred manufacturing partner for major Western pharma companies on the […]
How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end
The year 2022 went down as one of the worst years for the S&P500, the bellweather index for the American stockmarket. A large part of the fall was thanks to the big tumble big tech companies took after a stellar run over the recent years. “America’s five largest technology companies—Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta—saw […]
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