A load of crap from an idle brainPersonal, Movies, Music, IT, India, Singapore, Politics, Fun

After having nurtured the telecom sector of his company and the carving of the business meant that the business went to younger brother Anil, the elder brother Mukesh Ambani seems to be in a tearing hurry.

Mukesh Ambani-led RIL’s foray into the telecom sector will entail an investment of about $5 billion, for which it is open to sharing infrastructure of younger brother Anil’s group firm Reliance Communications, company officials said. The flagship firm of Ambani, who is known for making ultra-mega projects, would invest about a billion dollars for rolling out broadband services to attain a target of 100 million subscribers through the just acquired Infotel in five years, RIL top officials told analysts last night.

RIL acquired Infotel for Rs 4,800 crore on the day the Nahata group firm emerged as the sole player to have bid successfully for all-India spectrum at the end of the 16-day-long auction conducted by the government on Friday.Apart from this, the cash-rich RIL will have to pay Rs 12,872 crore to the government as the licence fee for spectrum bagged by Infotel, which would become the subsidiary of the Mukesh Ambani group’s flagship company.

Incidentally, the second largest largest telecom player, RCOM, bagged the highest number of circles along with Bharti Airtel for the 3G license auction, which concluded recently.

Read the full article here

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The football world cup begins in South Africa tomorrow.  I havent subscribed to the sports channels and that would explain that iam not dying to watch the matches. But ya, will be following the sport on the net as much as possible.  Websites, blogs, twitter, videos….there is a lot to choose from.

As always, my favourites are anyone other than England and Brazil.  Why i dislike England is because they remind me of the Indian cricket team comprising the fab 5 of yesteryears.  Apart from their personal records, India hardly won anything when they played.  Similarly, i believe the English football team is also a team of superstars.

Brazil is an exception as it manages to win the cup inspite of having so many superstars in their team.  But then they have won the trophy so many times that iam bored of following them.

Argentina, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal…so many to choose.  Hope Italy doesnt suffer from the defending champions curse and crash out soon.

The matches are telecast late at night here and i dont think i have the patience or energy to stay up late at night to watch the matches.   But will try to catch any of the matches that falls over the weekends.  If i was back home in Hyderabad, i would have stayed up late and watched all the matches with my dad.

My prediction of the toppers per group

Group A – France, Mexico
Group B – Argentina, Korea
Group C – England, USA
Group D – Germany, Australia
Group E – Netherlands, Denmark
Group F – Italy, Slovakia (guess)
Group G – Brazil, Portugal
Group H – Spain, Switzerland

May the best team win

Above world cup groups image courtesy: Eldirectorioargentino

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Its been a year since i moved this blog to my own domain.  Didnt realise till the other day when i was searching something about my domain and found that it was to expire in a few days.  That’s when i remembered about a mail i got from Justhost explaining that since i have hosted my blog with them, they will continue to renew my domain name for free.

The past year of hosting has been really wonderful and the guys at Justhost have been a great help. Havent had any downtime of this website.  Touchwood.  On the 24th of this month, i would have completed 6 years of blogging.  When i started, i never realised that i would last so long.  Moving to my own domain has taught me a lot of things about hosting and stuff.  Hope to blog till there are news which will prompt me to comment. And i hope such news never stops.

Meanwhile will start writing more about finance and investing as these are the interests that i plan to pursue further. I started investing in the Indian stock markets in 2005 for fun.  TCS was coming out with its maiden IPO and i applied for it.  That was my first ever investment in equity.  I had been investing in mutual funds before that through Systematic Investment Plan (SIP).  I was allotted 7 shares of TCS for around Rs 850 each.  I sold them off a few months later around Rs 1250. I tasted blood and havent looked back ever since

After reading Equitymaster for a few years, I signed up for their service and till now they have given me superb advice on stocks to pick up.  I have seen few people complaining about the advise provided by Equitymaster, but for me their advice has mostly been positive.  On an average, 8 out of 10 of their recommendations have worked for me.  And i would advise anyone to subscribe to them.  Its surely not cheap, but they have lots of small options that you can subscribe for.  Their reports are comprehensive and constantly updated.

Sometime in future, i plan to write the NCFM exams of the National Stock Exhchange and also get certified as a Certified Financial Planner (CFP).  Those are my long term plans.

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A bit old news, but still interesting way to sell your goods.  Levis, the world’s oldest jeans company now sells Jeans in India in installments.  Anyone tried buying?

Riding on the success of its equated monthly instalments (EMI) scheme, denim major Levi Strauss India is looking to join hands with four more banks to drive consumption growth.

Last year, the company had launched this unique EMI scheme in an attempt to fit into tight pockets of consumers during the reversionary phase. This scheme allows consumers to buy premium-priced denims on a zero per cent interest.

At present, the company has tie-ups with Axis bank and HDFC Bank, where a buyer can pay the total amount over three equal instalments using their credit card for a shopping value of a minimum of Rs 1,500.

Read full news here

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In Singapore, everyone aspires for the 5Cs – Car, condo, Cash, Credit Card & Club membership.  As countries like India grow economically, its natural for more and more people to have similar aspirations.  But what we are seeing as per this article in Bloomberg is the decline in credit card business in India.

Its normal to see people carrying 4-5 credit cards in their wallets in Singapore.  I remember having read some survey long ago that a Singaporean woman carries more credit cards than men.  So much is the spending power of a Singaporean woman that one of the biggest bank in Singapore, UOB issues a credit card exclusively for women. They even have a punchline “The men dont get it“.

The reason cited by this article is the tightening of the unsecured loan portfolios.  Where does it leave the gen Y now? Will this lack of disposable income affect the growth of the Indian economy?  Afterall, the Indian government is banking on this new generation to push the GDP growth to more than 10% annually. Or is cash the new king?

The number of credit cards being used in India has fallen by around one-third or 35% over the last two years. The sharp drop is being attributed to banks’ move to cut unsecured loan portfolios and defaults.

You might have  noticed that those annoying phone calls from banks pushing credit cards have stopped. If you haven’t, you may be surprised to know that one crore credit cards have gone out of circulation over the past two years. There were 2.83 cr credit cards in April 2008. It’s down to 1.83 cr in March 2010.

Banks aggressively selling credit cards have became cautious after suffering defaults. While officials didn’t disclose the extent of their losses, the numbers are clearly quite high.

Another article in Moneylife on the same issue mentions that the credit cards have become unprofitable after having suffered huge losses.

Ever wondered why there are fewer calls from telemarketers offering you a platinum, lifetime free credit card? It has nothing to do with the Do Not Disturb (DND) facility from telecom operators. Credit cards have become unprofitable, especially after various banks suffered huge delinquencies in 2005-07, the boom years. Since the bankers or card issuers are not earning much money on credit cards, you now have to really struggle to get one.

A few years ago or before the 2008 recession, people used to receive a lot of marketing calls for credit cards, free for life from any annual fee. Now the trend seems to have reversed. With the slowdown, many people defaulted on their credit card payments. Usually, during a slowdown, the number of defaults goes up rapidly. However, people don’t default on their home or car loans, since there is a danger of the creditor taking possession of the collateral. However, the same is not true for a credit card. Even if the user defaults on his credit card payment, the recovery takes much more time.

Above picture courtesy: Deems

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