Howard Schultz’s fight to stop a Starbucks barista uprising
This long read from the Washington Post is a brilliant case study of just how dramatically the world has changed in the past four years – supply side issues (especially the supply of labour) are now a critical challenge the world over. The even deeper issue is that inflation is lifting the cost of living […]
Tech as an Enabler of Free Cashflow Compounding
Rising Giants have been at the forefront of implementing tech solutions to sustain their competitive advantages, drive efficiencies (around cost, working capital and asset utilisation) and build scalable organisations (transitioning from single to multi-product & multi-geography companies). At the same time, the relatively low-cost but high impact nature (low marginal cost & ability to scale […]
How Zoho became a $1B company without a dime of external investment…
Whilst India is clearly a world leader in IT services, its success in IT products has been patchy. Zoho, an enterprise software company is one of the few success stories in this space. It is special not just because it is a rare success but also the way the company has got here. In a […]
Why MS Dhoni doesn’t carry his phone and what we can learn from him
Our 2020 bestseller “The Victory Project: Six Steps to Peak Potential” espoused simplicity and decluttering as essential behaviours for improving productivity and performance. Supreme Court lawyer and our favourite Indian Express columnist, Menaka Guruswamy (whose father’s friend is a client of Marcellus) has written a piece supporting this point of view. Interestingly, however, this support […]
Durga Puja: What to eat first in a pujo thali, and the four sections of Bengali cuisine
This article uses the context of food to convey the antecedents of the Durga Puja (or ‘pujo’ for those who prefer the Bengali pronounciation) in Bengal: “We first find the mention of Durga pujo in the 1500s, when it was only observed by the zamindars (landlords) households of Malda and Dinajpur. Technically, Durga pujo is a […]
The Blackstone rebellion: how one country took on the world’s biggest commercial landlord
Real estate has seen growing interest as an asset class for investment institutions looking for long dated steady yielding assets, such as pension funds. However, until now much of the interest had been in commercial property such as office spaces and malls. But increasingly, residential real estate has also become a part of many portfolios. […]
America’s Throwaway Spies
A few years ago we read a report of the death of an Indian spy who defected to the CIA only to be abandoned by the American spy agency. Turns out that wasn’t an exception for the CIA when it comes to foreign agents. Reuters have been investigating six cases of Iranian agents recruited and abandoned by […]
The new era of stronger hurricanes: bigger storms, better forecasts
With climactic extremes – extreme heat in Europe, extensive flooding on the sub-continents, unseasonal rain, etc – becoming the norm, technology is being brought into play to predict the unpredictable. As this FT article explains, “According to meteorologists at Nasa, a warming earth is producing major storms with more intense rainfall and larger storm surges.” This long […]
P/E Multiples are Deceptively Dangerous
A stock trading at a P/E multiple of 50x could be cheaper than one trading at 15x P/E multiple, even if both stocks deliver the same profit growth. This is possible due to factors such as superior capital efficiency (measured by Return on Capital Employed) and greater longevity of free cashflow compounding. Moreover, a focus […]
India’s US$ 100 billion energy windfall
Whilst India remains the most energy intensive of the world’s four largest economies (i.e., we use more power per $1 of GDP than USA, China, and Japan), India today is far more efficient in the use of oil & coal than it was a decade ago. This improved efficiency in the use of energy has […]
How thinking hard makes the brain tired
As much as we would love to endlessly engage in intellectually stimulating activities, mental fatigue is a reality. Much like physical tiredness, our brains do get tired when we exert them for long periods of time. However, unlike physical activity, exerting cognitive control is not energy intensive. “One analysis of previous studies suggests that cognitively overworked […]
How one of America’s last piano manufacturers stays alive
Capitalism has arguably made human lives better in general but in certain cases the relentless pursuit of efficiency and productivity has come at the expense of quality. The piano, the musical instrument made popular by the Mozart-era of western classical music, has been one such casualty going through a steady decline in quality through the […]
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