Monday, 16 December 2013

Marketing Lessons from Elections Results: Lesson 1

Lesson 1: Listen to your customer or perish!

Congress erred into believing that it could afford to continue to provide electors freebies and choose to remain ignorant of the larger and substantially changing demand and preferences of the voters. Before, it could take stock of the situation it found itself in a situation where the party was facing a target customer-set whose preferences had changed. The voters had changed their preferences. They were no longer dependent on government to dole out of roti, kapda aur makaan. Instead, they wanted enabling infrastructure in terms of education, jobs and business enabling policies which was largely corruption free and bipartisanship.

The Congress party failed to assess this tectonic shift in the preferences of the Indian voters. The newly floated Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Modi-led BJP had somewhat been able to read the sentiments of this section of voters better.

Thursday, 12 December 2013

Sssshhhh... SEBI casting its net on the Insider trader!!

New regulations being put in place by SEBI to silence the noiseless Insider Trading which is rampant in bourses

Indian bourses are not unfamiliar territories for insider trading. There has been an unstated assessment which holds weightage which mentions that movement in stock prices are substantially driven through such information. When the Rajat Gupta, the ousted director of Goldman Sachs was convicted of insider trading, this spectre of illegal handling of price sensitive information for the benefit of select individuals was splashed on global scale. 

India which had its own share of insider trading woes and recently the capital market watchdog, SEBI, is raising its defenses against possible breach of its security cover from wily market participants who might be sniffing at opportunities to circumvent rules and benefit from insider trading. It plans to bring even bureaucrats and judges into the ambit of its net. The idea of SEBI is to bring anyone who has access to price sensitive information which is not in the public domain to be brought into the net of regulations.

Rationale of Sharing Costs: Reliance and Bharti Airtel sign deal

Reliance Industries and Bharti Airtel ink agreement to share towers

Reliance Industries 4G rollout
Reliance Industries which is expected to roll out its much awaited 4-G services across the country has tied up with the largest telecom operator of the country, Bharti Airtel to share its telecom infrastructure. This move is expected to bring a number of advantages for both the companies.





Expected benefits to new-entrant Reliance Industries
The new entrant into the highly competitive market would save on its cost of investment and operations as it would start its operations riding on the shared telecom infrastructure of Bharti.

Thursday, 6 June 2013

Functions of Commercial banks in India

Functions of Commercial banks in India 

Commercial Banks like State Bank of India play a lot of important roles and functions as explained below.


I. Primary / Banking Functions :-


Commercial banks have two important banking functions. One is accepting deposits and other is advancing loans.

  • 1.1 Deposits :-


One of the main function of a bank is to accept deposits from the public. Deposits are accepted by the banks in various forms.

Functions of Central Bank (Reserve Bank of India)


Functions of Central Bank (Reserve Bank of India)


Central bank of a country is the primary bank of the country. It works as the most important institution in the financial system of the economy. In India,Reserve Bank of India plays the role of Central Bank's role.

The main functions of Central Bank of any country are:

Functions of Central Bank.     Downloaded from Inspire Academy

Tuesday, 8 January 2013

Katrina Kaif's case in Service Tax rules

Katrina Kaif's case in Service Tax rules


Katrina Kaif's Service Tax worries
The Tax authorities had demanded payment of Rs. 2.79 crore and interest and penalyty of Rs. 34 lakhs as Service Tax payment dues from leading Bollywood actress, Katrina Kaif. The Indirect Taxes Appellate Tribunal has made a ruling in favour of the leading lady. The main points of discourse in this case are:

Katrina Kaif's agent Matrix India Entertainment Consultants had been entrusted the task of collecting payments and making service tax payments on her behalf. The agent had made payment of Service Tax albeit under the wrong head of advertising services instaed of "business auxiliary services". Contesting the claim of Tax department, the counelf of Katrina Kaif argued that the payment of Service Tax had been made, even though under wrong head, and so she is not liable for payment of additional tax and penalty charges.

It makes it clear that an agent is allowed to make payment of behalf of a principal and the prinicipal gets due credit of the same.

Thursday, 8 November 2012

What is the Financial Implication of Politics on Business and Economy - A look at USA and China

What are the financial implications of politics?


Much have been spoken about the implications of American election result of business and economy in India and Mr. Barrack Obama is back once more in White House for another 4-year term. While the vanguard of free markets and capitalism America was preparing for a pitched battle for democracy, China which represents the other spectrum of economic and political set-up (the communist) was having a change of guard too. Two of the world's largest economies were having major political changes and much was at stake for the world economy. This brings us to the questions : Why is politics so important to economy? What does politics or the lack of it adds to the economy?