Long Read: The Kindle: Reinventing the Book
Many of us who love reading still romanticize reading off a paperback. But the greediest of us would agree that an e-reader wins hands down in terms of utility – we don’t have to be happy carrying books with us wherever we go, we can take the library with us. And the ubiquitous e-reader has […]
Long read: Private Coaching rise is now a Prestige issue for Indian Families. That’s a Vicious turn
Dr Palash Baruah is Associate Fellow at National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), New Delhi and DL Wankhar is a retired officer of the Government of India. In this piece for The Print, they use publicly available data to highlight the rapid surge – across rural and urban areas – in spending on private […]
Long read: The Midwives who stopped murdering Girls and started saving them
On 21st October our next book “Behold the Leviathan: The Unusual Rise of Modern India” will be published by Penguin Random House. One of the central tenets of the book is the explosive acceleration in the levels of educational attainment, employment and entrepreneurial success of Indian women. Whilst we look forward to discussing with you how we are […]
Portfolio Performance and Update on Fundamentals – August 2024
Consistent Compounders Portfolio (CCP) Performance of Marcellus’ CCP portfolio has turned a corner in absolute returns over the last 18 months and in relative returns (relative to Nifty50 TRI) over the last six months. This is attributed to both the upgrades made to our portfolio construction approach as well as to the strong performance of […]
Short read: IISc scientists report computing breakthrough
It is widely accepted that the US is unsurprisingly leading the way in Artificial Intelligence with China a distant second and the rest of the world nowhere in sight. At the same time, Indian technology has been perceived to at best digitise offline businesses through fintech, edtech, healthtech, etc as opposed to delivering any genuinely […]
Short read: The information wars are about to get worse, Yuval Noah Harari argues
The internet and in particular social media has democratised content generation leading to an explosion of misinformation and fake news. In a year when half the world is voting to elect their leaders, this attains a lot of significance. In a new book – Nexus by noted Israeli historian, Yuval Noah Harari (author of […]
Short read: Over Rs 2 Lakh Crore Unclaimed: India’s Growing Asset Transmission Challenges
As Indian households financialise their wealth, one side-effect seems to be the pile-up in unclaimed assets (after the owner of the asset has passed away). As per Moneylife, India now has Rs 2 trillion ($25 bn) of such assets [that’s almost 0.7% of India’s GDP] and this number is growing at 15-20% per annum: “Generally, […]
Long read: Chip War’s Chris Miller on Putin, China, and The Future
In November 2022, OpenAI launched ChatGPT 3 which took the world by storm resulting in a race to build computing infrastructure (Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta are spending tens of billions) in turn making Nvidia, almost a monopoly in GPU chips, one of the world’s most valuable companies. Just a month before that was the […]
Long read: Ancient Indian medical system had an image crisis. A new name fixed it
Patrick Olivelle, Professor Emeritus of Asian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, has been for several decades a renowned guru on ancient India’s religious and social customs. In this intriguing article, Mr Olivelle explains how medical professionals had to reinvent themselves in ancient India. The challenge for medical professionals was that until about […]
Long read: Review of Sir John Kay’s “The Corporation in the 21st Century: Why (Almost) Everything We Are Told About Business Is Wrong”
Sir John Kay has been our business strategy guru for the entirety of our professional careers. Whilst he’s known to the wider world as an economist, John has also been a very successful investor across public & private markets and across financial & physical assets. For over three decades, he managed the endowment of St […]
Short Read: Weight-loss drugs ‘slow down the ageing process’, scientists suggest
The global pharmaceutical industry had to wait a while for its next blockbuster drug which came in the form of semaglutide, originally meant to treat diabetes but eventually found to be aiding weight loss. It is indeed turning out to be a wonder drug with new studies now showing anti-ageing benefits. Intuitively reducing weight should […]
Short Read: Twenty-five Years on, “Fight Club” Punches Harder than ever
Student protests have been powerful and influential through history, partly by the sheer energy and courage to change what’s perceived to be wrong with the world but also a more idealistic view of how the world should be. And through history books, music and movies have influenced young minds in the development of such an […]
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