Manoj's Review on Books

  Am reminded of my master’s degree in finance that I had pursed back in 2009-10, one of the key problems that we had always tried to solve was the quantifiable impact of a bunch of variables on the price of a stock. Irrespective of the number of variables that were infused into an equation, there was always an element ‘X’ which was basically an unknown variable that also contributes to the price movement. Judea Pearl uses the term confounder instead of ‘X’ but the fundamental point remains the same. In a cause-effect equation, we have not come to a position wherein the exact cause of effect can be fully explained or pointed to a definite cause. However, with a large sample in place we can state with a certain degree of confidence that can pinpoint the reasons of occurrences. I was surprised to note that even smoking – cancer kind of cause-effect equations has taken three to four decades of debate before arriving at a concrete conclusion. The reason drives down to the fact that dri

For over 10 years ever since finishing graduation back in 2006, I did not have a stable job nor a decent opportunity to prove myself. A lot of aspiring talent won’t be able to handle one bad manager. However, I had to go through three of them and importantly sustain the phase beyond their cusp. For a lot of people getting the right opportunity was a challenge. In my case getting an opportunity itself was a challenge, the initial few years after graduation fizzled out without any noteworthy job roles. Since my career was not even getting a kickstart, I had opted to do my masters in finance in not so recognized institution in Mumbai. Phase 1 Post completion of my masters, I was already in my mid 20’s, I was offered the role of Business Analyst and worked under a boss who was from IIM Bangalore. Clearly, he was not impressed with me but I was more than willing to put in the required level of hard work and scale up. In just about 7 or 8 months in the job, he had ripped me apart in em

When I ask how many companies over a period of 10 years hit a consistent revenue growth of 10% and ROCE of 15% amongst 5000 listed Indian companies. What will be your answer? I was awestruck to know the right answer to be only 7, here is the list: *Asian Paints *Berger Paints *Marico Industries *Page Industries *Axis Bank *HDFC Bank *Astral Poly Clearly, simple attributes are not easy to sustain over a really long period of time and this is a striking example. Saurabh tries to identify the pillars behind the success of all these 7 companies with wide spread parameters like consistency of management / board, importance of high quality talent, reliance on IT as an enabler for faster growth along with efficiency, capital allocation, discipline to stick with their core business line, advertisements, relationship with dealers / suppliers, deepening competitive moats and innovation.   Of all the case studies, Asian Paints was highly impressive. It’s a firm that began it