India – Policy Paralysis or Malevolent Mismanagement

Media and analysts have been wanting to describe the inability of the Congress government to pass important bills as “policy paralysis”. A large part of the economic mess we’re in has been ascribed to this paralysis.

Unfortunately this play on words is misleading and actually, quite off >>read more…

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Scale is now a clear differentiator for LPOs: Is a shake-out imminent?

Theory tells us that as industries mature, scale becomes increasingly important. ValueNotes’ latest research indicates that this is now the case with the legal process outsourcing or LPO industry in India.

Back in 2005, ValueNotes was one of the first analyst firms to track the (then fledgling) >>read more…

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Facebook and the Indian IPO market

Notwithstanding the alleged irregularities in the Facebook IPO, let’s understand that IPO markets have structurally changed over the last two decades. Increasingly, models and rules borrowed from the US have been adopted in other countries, including India.

From a time when the CCI controlled IPO >>read more…

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Urban Indians’ financial planning flawed

The recently released HDFC Life ValueNotes Life Freedom Index highlights several key lacunae in the way urban Indians plan their financial investments.

Even as we appear to be increasingly aware of the need for planning, our awareness or knowledge is limited. Many pundits have highlighted the lack >>read more…

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The ONGC Fiasco – Investors are not fools

Much has been written and said about the bungled ONGC divestment. About the fact that LIC was forced to bail out the issue. About how the pricing left nothing on the table for investors. About how regulation was twisted to enable government divestment without the traditional public issue >>read more…

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Private Banks in India: The technology advantage

challenges_faced_by_CTOs

Banks and financial institutions are not just users of technology. They have driven (and continue to drive) innovations in technology. ATMs were widespread before the PC revolution, the SWIFT network allowed global electronic money transfer before there was any Internet. Stock and commodity exchanges trade trillions electronically every day.

We tend >>read more…

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INET Bangalore: The Future of the Internet in India

Some weeks back, at the INET conference in Bangalore, we were treated to a variety of “expert” opinions on the future of the Internet in India.

There was the usual tom-tomming about growth, and how with 100+ million users, India is now No. 3 in the global >>read more…

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Doom and Gloom: A time to Buy Stocks?

Over the past few months, the news has been depressing for investors (and many others as well!).

Internationally:

The Greeks, Italians, and sundry other Europeans threaten to bring down the Euro

The US government does not know how to revive its listless economy

Even >>read more…

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Urbanisation of India: Huge growth opportunities

urbanisation

An inescapable and only too visible trend is the rapid urbanisation of India. Existing cities are growing rapidly (and haphazardly) in all directions, those that cannot (like Mumbai) are growing vertically, and many villages now resemble towns. Current estimates of “urban” population are in excess of 300 million, and likely >>read more…

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The Union Budget 2011-12: Do we expect too much from the Finance Minister?

Last week, I was at a conference where one of the speakers was a Commissioner of Customs. Inevitably, given that the Finance Minister’s budget speech was a few days away, many questions were focused on the budget. One of these was about how the budget was kept secret.

His response >>read more…

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