Outlook Business March 2024

There seems to be no dull day at start-up street. From Vijay Shekhar Sharma (VSS) to Ashneer Grover to Byju Raveendran, our social media feed remains well fed. In fact, timelines for the rise and fall of these three would have many similarities. Columns and columns of media space were dedicated to their adulation, and the same space, if not more, was used for the minutest details as controversy and bad luck hit them hard. Suddenly, from poster boys of heady success in the start-up valley, they are the pinup boys of what disproportionate ambition could do to otherwise seemingly good men (I am limiting myself to the men since the woman who comes to mind does not want us to write about her till the judiciary decides otherwise). The…

25 years ago, a bunch of college enthusiasts saw a dream, the dream of “Creating Job Creators” when the Entrepreneurship Cell of IIT Bombay was born. We started in an era where startups were an eccentric anomaly for our nation, we gave our best and exceeded expectations time and time again. Lets look back at the glorious past to have a measure of the mountains we have traversed; In the bustling campus, Entrepreneurship Cell (E-Cell) was born as a part of the Career Management Center (CMC) in October 1998. Struggling to make the presence felt, the tireless nights and an undying perseverance paid off in 2001 when Eureka!, our B-Plan Competition, got recognized as ‘Asia's Largest Business Plan Com-petition’ by CNN. The success of Eureka! didn't stop there. In 2005,…

COVER STORY DIE ANOTHER DAY Vijay Shekhar Sharma (VSS) is a man of grand announcements. Many critical moments in his life—starting one of the earliest payments banks in the country to receiving funding from legendary investor Warren Buffet—were all marked by loud proclamations of ambition and aplomb. But as he lives through one of the most decisive moments of his entrepreneurial career, wherein he seemingly cedes control of the payments bank that was the cornerstone of his fintech universe, the Paytm founder prefers the silent way out. On February 26, One97 Communications (OCL), the listed entity behind the popular Paytm payments application, disclosed to the stock exchanges that its payments bank arm underwent a major rejig of its decision-making body. “OCL withdraws its nominee from the Paytm Payments Bank board and…

spOtlight Social media is an interesting place if one wants to spot bizarre investment behaviour. Here are some interesting examples. An investor claims - I am not looking at high returns like 40% p.a., I am happy with 20% returns as I do not want to take high risk. Another investor pledged his existing mutual funds and is day trading to gain an extra 7-10% return which he considers as safe. Another investor informs how he invested in best schemes across Equity, Hybrid, Debt etc. such that he has a diversified portfolio. All these are typically the outcome of a bull market, where investors think they can maximise their returns by trading and other activities in order to become Richie Rich. Unfortunately, in reality, such practices eventually sow seeds for…

Private investments have only recently picked up. Do you think the fiscal deficit target of 4.5% can be achieved without a significant rise in private sector expenditure? First, I think the current growth momentum can be sustained even at a slightly lower fiscal deficit, because I do not see the absolute amount of capital expenditure declining from present levels. That is 10% revised to 9.5% for the current year and 11.1% in the next year. I do not think that the consolidation will come at the expense of reducing that. It will come partly through increased revenue, increased denominator in the GDP [gross domestic product] and perhaps through some compression of other expenditure as a proportion of GDP. So, I do not think that we will be seeing any reduction…

DECODED HUNGRY AND POOR YOKED TO FARM POLICIES The march by thousands of farmers from Punjab towards the National Capital last month threw up a deja vu moment for the Narendra Modi government. Their protests brought back memories of 2021 when farmers from Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh locked horns with the government over three farm laws that it had sought to introduce for reforming the country's agriculture sector. Their anger, fuelled by the fear of collapse of the minimum support price (MSP) programme and threat to their financial security net, forced the government to withdraw the three laws. This time, the farmers want legal guarantee for MSP as per the formula of C2+50% suggested by M.S. Swaminathan, the father of the Green Revolution in India. Under this formula, farmers will…