Author Archive

One of the events that has been overshadowed somewhat is the proposed auction of WiMAX licenses along with the 3G license auction in a couple of months (hopefully!). Given the low internet penetration within the country, broadband technologies can go a long way in increasing the number of internet users. Of these, WiMAX holds a lot of promise especially to cater to the last mile customers in rural areas and relatively remote urban areas. continue

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Origin

The origins of Taurus could be traced to the 1986 event known as the “Big Bang”, during which the London Stock Exchange (LSE) was turned into a self-regulating organization under the oversight of the Bank of England. Many regulations were lifted and ultimately the open-outcry market was replaced by electronic trading. The Big Bang led to huge trading volumes on the LSE. At that time, using the existing LSE batch trading system, settling a trade required three to six weeks even as trades were settled in the United States in three to five days and in Japan in only two days. One of the major problems for LSE was that its inefficient and inflexible system was primarily paper-based. continue

These days, as soon as one steps out of the house, it is amazing how quickly a 500 or 1,000 Rupee note turns into meager change. Everybody is talking about rising prices, inflation, increased ‘essential’ expenditures etc. I think it is still prudent to talk about lowering the highest denomination notes available in India … and I would try to argue why. continue

There are many retail investors in the stock market who do not necessarily understand the market, but still want to participate and profit from it. One of the good avenues that these people had were IPOs (Initial Public Offerings). I know of many who have demat accounts just for the purpose of investing as and when IPOs hit the markets. They subscribe to these, and if they are alloted some shares, they sell those on the day of listing. These investors are not willing to be exposed to the market risk by remaining invested in stocks and are happy with the listing gains (difference in the listing price and the IPO issue price). continue

I recently went to a Tata Croma showroom in Mumbai and found a few package deals that are on offer. The ones that stood out for me were those that were aimed at the newly-weds. Though the name suggests an offering for people who have just been married, it covers mostly everyone who is setting up a new home. These might be newly formed nuclear families that are moving out of their joint family existence (may be to a new city) or a couple of bachelors that would be now be sharing an apartment or anyone who is leasing/buying a new house and does not have the essential electronic items every house requires. continue

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a broad term (in its current form). It includes issues such as businesses maintaining high ethical standards, strictly adhering to laws of the state, doing their bit for the society etc. The ethics and the laws part seem completely prudent, though I would like to delve further into the ‘giving back to society’ aspect. continue

Apart from doing secondary research, for this post, we got in touch with Radio Mirchi to gain more insights. We would like to thank Sheeza Kazmi and Rishikar Krishna from Radio Mirchi for their inputs.

Radio would arguably be one of the oldest sources of entertainment. From the days of dominance of  All India Radio (AIR) to the present bouquet of channel options available, this industry has come a long way. Things are slated to become more interesting as more players enter the industry and the pie grows. continue

This is the second of the two posts detailing the Arcelor Mittal deal. The first post gave the background of the deal and the process in which the offer was communicated. This post details the happenings after the offer was made. continue

In this and the next post, I would try to give an account as to how the “impossible” Arcelor-Mittal merger became possible.

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Breaking news: Mil gaya Swarg ka rasta (The road to heaven has now been discovered). Need I say more? Yes, I am talking about India TV.

India TV was launched in middle of 2004 when the number of news channels on TV were exploding. These news channels belonged to established production houses. They were either backed by a strong TV service (such as Star News by Star TV Asia) or were already synonymous with news (such as Aaj Tak of the TV Today network). continue