When I wrote the raja beta and rani bitiya piece last week, I had no idea that it would touch such a nerve. As of today, the post on my personal blog has been viewed some 66,000 times and my first tweet reached more than 4.5 lakh people. There were many conversations around the topic as people weighed in with...
Retail investors are the last to know when things go wrong with their money. This is especially true of difficult-to-value-and-trade (in India) financial products such as bonds. The story gets even more complicated on how to treat bonds that behave like (or worse than) equity – for example AT1 bonds. AT1 bonds are issued by...
Chucking a brand-new laptop into the family swimming pool to see if it was indeed waterproof, to barking into the phone to call the domestic help to raise the curtains that are two feet away from the bejeweled GenZ hand, to deliberately smashing a new phone after a fight with the parents. These are just...
My first column in Bloomberg Opinion If you’ve ever spent significant time abroad, or tried supporting family overseas, you know that the process of sending money internationally can be stressful. It costs time and money — often too much of both. There’s hope that global crypto currencies will make this process easier, but until those become...
The number of policyholders is 30 crore. Assets under management are Rs 27.6 lakh crore (to see this in context, understand that the annual budget of India for FY 22 is Rs 34.8 lakh crore). An annual premium pipeline of Rs 3.4 lakh crore. A household name that for decades has meant life insurance in...
A new-found confidence over the well-handled Covid-19 crisis found its way into Budget 2021. This is reflected in three aspects of the budget. One, the finance minister ignored suggestions to tax the rich with a higher surcharge or a Covid-19 cess. Two, the government has gone for growth with a large push on capital spending....
It is not often that an Economist and a government one at that is able to bring energy and passion in a speech. But India’s Chief Economic Advisor K V Subramanian managed the impossible when he presented the highlights of Economic Survey 2020-21 on 29 January 2021. Using stories to put across complex economic concepts,...
When thousands of tractors run amok over the roads of Delhi, battering public goods and public servants because the demand of a section of ‘farmers’ for repeal of farm laws is not met, it is a good time to ask some questions. Who are these people and how is it that they drive in SUVs,...
It’s happened. The Sensex has hit the big milestone of 50,000 points today, 21 January 2021. The Indian stock market, filled with money of global and domestic investors is celebrating the reviving economy, the vaccine roll-out and the big-bang budget signals coming from North Block. It can be said, the market is celebrating the re-rating of...
In March 2020 we understood risk a little better in both equity and debt mutual funds. Better returns have been one of the reasons that investors released the safety belt of the fixed deposit to ride market-linked returns in both equity and debt. But higher returns and liquidity come with a greater risk. Investors need...