The endless magic of Neil Gaiman’s “The Sandman”
Off late, Netflix has been burning a lot of cash on content, mostly without much gain – mediocre quality despite the big budgets, unsurprisingly hasn’t made a difference to its subscriber additions. This month, another big budget series ‘The Sandman’, supposedly costing a whopping $15m an episode, was launched to rave reviews. Here’s one from […]
Salman Rushdie and the Power of Words
The day after Salman Rushdie was stabbed repeatedly in western New York, we scanned the Indian media to see if any of our “leaders” had anything to say about this atrocity. We couldn’t find any Indian leader – in politics or beyond – having a point of view on what was in practical terms an […]
The private equity club: how corporate raiders became teams of rivals
Private equity as an asset class has taken off in a big way amongst institutional asset allocators over the past four decades or so, with especially the leveraged buy-outs almost coinciding with the low interest rate regime over the same period. This article traces the evolution of the competitive intensity in the private equity industry […]
I stopped reading the news. Is the problem me — or the product?
One of the things we try to impress upon the youngsters who join Marcellus is to spend as little as possible in the morning reading the newspapers. We thought that this problem was specific to India where the failing business model of newspapers has made them a shadow of their former selves. However, this piece […]
Review of the ‘The Crux: How Leaders Become Strategists’ by Richard Rumelt
Richard Rumelt is a professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management. A decade ago he published ‘Good Strategy/Bad Strategy’ which remains one of the best books on strategy we have read. Earlier this year, Rumelt published ‘The Crux’. Knowing Rumelt’s no-nonsense attitude to practical corporate strategy formulation we hit the ‘Buy’ button on Kindle unhesitatingly. […]
How Multinationals Lost the Plot in India
Despite having access to enough capital and the experience of running financial services businesses for decades globally, foreign players have struggled in India. While the multinationals did not have any dearth of talent, capital, or technology, sustainable growth has eluded them (loan book market share has halved from ~8% in FY2000 to ~4% in FY2021). […]
Rising Giants’ M&A Forays
Acquisitions have been a cornerstone of Rising Giants’ growth strategy in recent years facilitated by burgeoning internal accruals and the consolidation opportunities thrown up by Covid-19. In contrast to the abysmal track record of Indian corporates generally with respect to acquisitions (particularly, international ones), the Rising Giants’ measured approach in terms of acquisition size, their […]
Too little, too late: Intel’s legacy is eroding
The article’s sub-title “…is the chip giant facing a Kodak moment?” might sound a bit sensationalist but in the world of disruptive tech, you don’t rule out any possibility. Especially if you follow how many times, the once iconic Intel has stumbled in the recent past “The company is stuck on an aging 10nm process; its […]
In “The Metaverse”, Matthew Ball explains where the idea came from
The use of the word Metaverse shot up sometime last year during the post Covid tech boom implying all of us will continue to spend the rest of our lives virtually. It got a stamp of credibility when Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella referred to it in one of his speeches. And Facebook actually changed its […]
How the Indian action spectacular RRR became a smash in America
A couple of months ago we had highlighted in 3 longs & 3 shorts that the Telugu superhit was topping Netflix’s charts in USA – see https://marcellus.in/story/the-netflix-hit-rrr-is-a-political-screed-an-action-bonanza-and-an-exhilarating-musical/ Now, as Simon Abrams, writes something even more unusual is happening: “The Telugu-language Indian action spectacular “RRR,” or “Rise, Roar, Revolt,” was already a worldwide box office winner when it […]
Quietly working his way up, Avinash Sable represents the steady rise of Indian athletics
A guest speaker in one of our recent webinars said India’s progress in the field of sports is an indicator of the strides the country as a whole is making in general. He might not be off the mark but he was clearly coming off the highs of India’s spectacular show in the recent Commonwealth […]
Venture capital’s silent crash: when the tech boom met reality
When the stock market crashes or ‘corrects’, you can see that right in front of you and, if you are so minded, you can do something about it. In the case of VC investing, as this piece in last week’s 3 longs & 3 shorts highlighted, there is very little an investor in VC funds […]
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