Writings
My writing on the Indian economy, public policy, and data. Filter by source, type, or topic.
Working with Instinct to put out a daily news podcast
On the night of Oct 20, Instinct, the AI assistant I work with, and I designed a podcast. By the next morning the first edition was out: a daily audio briefing on India and the world, followed by that day’s two…
Cleaning up my digital record with Instinct
Over three weeks in Oct and Nov, Instinct, the AI assistant I work with, and I cleaned up my digital record: this website, my YouTube channel, my X feed, and my LinkedIn profile. Almost all of it happened in evenings…
Working with Instinct to turn a pile of public documents into a research tool
At the end of October, I asked Instinct, the AI assistant I work with, a question that had been sitting with me for a while: where is high-value unstructured data in India on which I can run an AI to get insights? It…
Fast work and deep work: what a month with an AI assistant taught me
At Thurro, the company I co-founded, converting unstructured data into usable, AI-ready material is our bread and butter. When AI assistants like Instinct started to arrive, a question kept coming at me from clients and…
My AI bot and I fought today
This morning, my AI assistant refused to do something I asked it to, and no explaining, cajoling, or permission from me could move it. When the work is routed through the bot, an obstinate bot can leave the human stuck.
The long road to scale in financial education
On Oct 27, 2026, CFA Society India hosted Tricia Rothschild, CFA, the interim president and chief executive of CFA Institute, in Mumbai. Preparing to hear her speak, I found myself researching the finances and histories…
Nine years of net gold buying equals nine years of current account deficit — and it has doubled in value
We combine customs trade data with daily spot gold to size what nine years of net gold imports cost India, and what the metal is worth now. Net gold outflow of $286.2bn over FY18 to FY26 sits within 1% of the cumulative…
The UPI MDR pool is about ₹1,000 crore a month, and two-thirds of it sits where nobody can see it
NPCI publishes UPI merchant payments by category every month, and the volumes reconcile exactly to the headline person-to-merchant totals — which means the merchant discount rate base can be sized before the first rupee…
India’s commodity trade is running on price, not volume
Customs value-and-quantity records let us split India’s trade into how much actually moved and what it cost — the question the headline value prints bury. We read it on the priceable commodity complex, where unit value…
India’s net FDI has all but vanished — even as foreign money keeps pouring in
Combining RBI balance-of-payments and DPIIT data, we can decompose India’s FDI into what arrives and in what form, what foreign investors take back out, and where Indian firms now invest abroad — a far richer read than…
Inflation targeting needs a reboot to align with current economic structure
India’s next policy review offers a rare chance to recalibrate not just the measure of inflation but the level at which it is targeted. India’s monetary policy regime has served the country well in the decade since the…
Manifest a better Bharat with artificial intelligence
The dawn of artificial intelligence (AI) era has been compared to various game-changing innovations in human history, like fire, the wheel, electricity, and the internet. Imagine the excitement that human beings had…
Publicly funded data must be public
Key takeaways India sits on a vast but underused trove of publicly funded data AI can unlock powerful insights if this data is accessible and structured Making public datasets open and machine-readable could drive…
India’s growth targets: Plan in INR
GDP targets set in terms of a foreign currency can lead to unintended consequences: India must consider setting growth goals in its own currency India has experienced robust economic growth in the aftermath of the…
The power of nowcasting
Knowing the recent present can be powerful for investors and policymakers – digital exhaust makes it possible In the face of an increasingly interconnected and volatile global economy, investors and policymakers are…
Urban growth takes a toll
India’s urbanization is expanding the geographical footprint of cities. Tolling in what have become arterial roads in cities gets a pushback from citizens As India’s cities continue to grow, the urban landscape has…
Green transition: Reducing the cost of capital
The capital stack of green transition industries will continue to evolve as industries mature. Reducing the cost of capital requires smart financial engineering Green transition requires multiple trillions of dollars of…
Singham of Kashmir
“Kashmir Under 370” by Mahendra Sabharwal, ex-DGP, J&K “Kashmir Under 370” is a very unassuming title for a book that has rich details on the politics and policing of the state. In the last decade of the last century…
SC Garg’s Explanation and Commentary on the Budget 2024-25
There used to be the Nani Palkhivala lectures on the Indian Budget. Thirty years after they ended in 1994, a new annual series of books by former Finance Secretary, Subhash Chandra Garg is bringing in the discipline and…
Mumbai’s road to resilience: Managing in a climate crisis
I am anxious. I am anxious about traffic jams. Every year in the winters, I drive between 2,000 and 4,000 kilometers across India. The most stressful thing about a drive is a traffic jam – it binds one to a place with…
Green trifecta: Financing higher retail capex in a low greenium world
Green transition (a) requires an increased share of investments by households, (b) creating an economy with higher capex and lower opex, and (c) without material green premium Green transition is here to stay. As…
Creating India’s Climate Stack
Data and models of climate change are required by society, business, and policymakers: building a tool which houses a common understanding can empower all stakeholders Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) is a unique…
Climate Policy Lab Academy 2024
A country makes big commitments at a mega climate event. For its people and industries, it then announces many policies to meet its commitments. How would you know if the policies (and their eventual implementation)…
The many insights from India’s toll analysis
Once a dataset is released to the public, the ability to derive insights is limited only by imagination. We detail our learnings from analyzing India’s tolls Akhilesh Tilotia and Akshata Kalloor Last August we…
Heatmaps for tracking India’s economic activity
Tracking movement on Indian roads provides insights into underlying demand and supply patterns since road traffic typically precedes expected demand. NIIF’s HeatMaps – Toll Roads report analyses Indian toll road data…
India’s fiscal contract: More incomes in the tax net
Akhilesh Tilotia and Akshata Kalloor. More Indians now assessed to tax, they have higher incomes, tax net is now cast wide, and average effective rates of tax have come down The fiscal choice for any country is whether…
NIIF – Monthly economic reports on India
When I joined the sell-side as an analyst two decades ago, maintaining databases, converting them to good-looking charts, and writing a basic headline was a full-time (well paying) job. That drudgery is now history! It…
India price point: Make it work for me
Lilliput Land by Prof Rama Bijapurkar Indian consumer market is as heterogenous as it is large – to win in this unique mid-income, high-aspiration market, craft a unique India strategy In the three years that I worked…
Union finances: Budgeting for long-term macro stability
Long-term trends on revenues, expenses, and debt of Union government show (a) India’s path from subsidies to capex, (b) a more conservative fiscal stance, and (c) a potentially lower debt-to-GDP ratio Since the interim…
Holding up half the sky
The changing circumstances, choices, and careers of women in India will shape the outcomes on demographics, demand, and destiny. We look at key macro trends to identify how the future could unfold. Elections With the…
INR: It’s now relatively stable
India’s currency has remained relatively stable – and is forecasted to remain so. INR strength can unlock significant capital flows Over the course of last year, we have touched upon the topic of the Indian rupee (INR)…
2023: Deccan darshan drive
It did not work out as planned. This would have been the third consecutive year of well-planned, long, winter vacation drives within India. The reader may recollect the write-ups from the Madhya Pradesh trip in 2021 and…
NIIF – India’s macro research report 2023
As we gear up to celebrate Republic Day, a symbol of India’s progress and growth, we’re excited to launch our report on India’s compelling macro story. “How we Track India’s Macro Story” captures the essence of the many…
Artificial intelligence – Challenges and opportunities
, Sep-Oct 2023 (opens a pdf; page 9) When I received the invite to write an article on the above topic, I knew for sure that I will contribute. I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do. I fed the email, practically…
Climate investments require ‘equity’
Social and financial sectors approach equity in climate investments very differently: a shared understanding can unlock human and financial capital Sometimes the best ideas come from completely unexpected places. A…
G20: Making climate finance of multilateral development banks impactful
Innovatively augmenting the resources of MDBs, alignment with national goals, and effective delivery of climate technology, finance, and resilience can create multiplier effects in climate finance Amit Garg, Akhilesh…
Winds of change: Learnings for the Indian offshore wind energy sector
Link on the WRI portal; PDF link on NIIF portal Published: Jun 27, 2022 In this paper, jointly written by teams from the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the National Investment and Infrastrcuture Fund (NIIF), we…
Building on India’s digital data stack
India’s digitalization drive is now spewing copious amounts of data – this can form the backbone of granular understanding and grand policy design The Financial Express An important corollary of Digital India is the…
De-risking developing country currencies for climate financing
T20 briefing paper My T20 Policy Brief for the Task Force 5 “Purpose & Performance: Reassessing the Global Financial Order” recommends that the G20 encourage its partner countries to create long-term central bank swap…
Lower volatility in exchange rate lowers cost of capital
Indian Rupee is now witnessing lower depreciation vis-à-vis the US Dollar and its volatility is at decadal lows An important component of the cost of capital for any domestic project, which relies on external financing…
वियतनाम —कुछ ही दशकों में युद्ध-पीड़ित से उभर कर रमणीय पर्यटक देश
वियतनाम में ९ दिनों की प्रथम पर्यटकी यात्रा का विवरण; चार महत्वपूर्ण शहरों का वर्णन Before we deep-dive into the details of Vietnam in this blog post, a quick note on the origins of this post. Over the last few…
Mobilising climate finance through long-term currency swaps
Akhilesh Tilotia and Jayant Sinha The Economic Times The global South requires trillions of dollars of private sector investments every year in climate mitigation, adaptation, and resilience. In most global South…
Green finance: Calibrating capital and regulations for different stages
Climate adaptation, mitigation, and resilience require trillions of dollars of financing. Green finance has hence caught the attention of companies, investors, regulators, and policy makers. As climate change creates…
Decoupled: Better inflation dynamics can lower yields in India for longer
India’s inflation trajectory has been stable leading to compressed differentials with the US: this led to a lower rate hike cycle and a possible longer-term lower yields Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) pause in its…
Green finance: Mind your Ps and Qs
“Green finance” is not naturally low-cost finance; with their fiduciary duty, investors expect appropriate returns. Focus should be on enhancing sources of finance and structuring What is now undisputed is that the…
India macro-2023: Prepare while the sun shines
For the month of December 2022, the purchase manager index (PMI) for India was 59.4, almost touching multi-decadal highs. PMI above 50 is taken to mean that an expansionary phase follows as confidence among participants…
Crystal gazing global growth 2023
Indian Merchant’s Chamber (IMC) [opens pdf] The last few years have conclusively shown that real outcomes are a lot more interesting than what even the most egregious forecasts can imagine. Almost no forecast saw the…
2022: North Karnataka-Western Maharashtra road trip
Another year-end, another road trip from Mumbai: this time to north Karnataka and western Maharashtra. We covered Pune, Kolhapur, Badami, Hampi, Tarkarli, and Mahabaleshwar over a 10-day period. The approx. 2,000 kms…
Building a pipeline of urban infrastructure projects
Over the last month, two important reports on urban India came out in quick succession: The World Bank’s report on “Financing India’s urban infrastructure needs” and the Reserve Bank of India’s “Report on Municipal…
Winner’s curse
Strategies to understand and mitigate it Last month, at a leadership development program, I went back to my alma mater, IIM Ahmedabad. It is always fantastic to go back to the classroom and that too at IIMA! A topic…
Reducing greenhouse gasses: Pathways to achieving the objective
Adding a monetary value to carbon can incentivize or disincentivize some sectors; setting performance standards can create a race for innovation Financial Express “Bending the curve”, or the process of changing the…
Building a network of green financing institutions in India
The idea that India needs to invest trillions of dollars in meeting its Net Zero by 2070 commitment is, by now, well known. Estimates run to over ten trillion dollars in the next half century or the hundreds of billions…
Amazing Australia – a must-visit touristy country!
For our winter holidays, we drove around Madhya Pradesh in December 2021. We ended up with another “winter holiday” in June/July 2022 – this time for a visit of the eastern coastal cities of Australia. Given that…
Net finance – A companion to net zero
India made five commitments at COP26: (1) it will increase its non-fossil energy capacity to 500 GW by 2030; (2) it will meet 50 percent of its energy requirements through renewable energy by 2030; (3) it will reduce…
Fiscal considerations of the green transition
State of public finances has a direct impact on Green policies that Government can pursue – the range of policy options gets shaped by the need for more revenues or the ability to spend them Financial Express India’s…
EFGHIJK: Taking stock of the Indian economy
Exports, fiscal, growth, health, inflation, jobs, and capital: sizing up the dynamics in the Indian economy in these volatile times Financial Express In September last year, with two waves of Covid-19 largely behind us…
India’s Union Budget FY2023 – Impetus for investments and capex
Indian government presented an investment-oriented budget with a focus on getting future ready. Increasing public investments and capital expenditure are expected to take the combined (Centre plus States) public capex…
Sequestering the fiscal bounty
The notional ‘saving’ of ~Rs 1 lakh crore on the fiscal deficit front offers India an opportunity to create a fund to deal with climate change Financial Express Fiscal year 2021-22 has been volatile, to say the least.
Madhya Pradesh: Food, forts, palaces, history, jungles, temples, hills, rivers, lakes…
Driving around for a fortnight Four families, four cars, fifteen of us, for four thousand kilometres over a fortnight: to me this was a flight of fantasy that such a plan could see execution. Yet, here are we are and…
IIM Ahmedabad public policy alumni special interest group 2021
Ico-lead as an alumni coordinator the IIMA Public Policy Alumni Special Interest Group’s (PP ASIG).Learn more about the IIMA PP ASIG’s activity highlights from 2021 in the #AnnualReport published recently.
Shaping our green future: Pathways and policies for a net zero transition
Observer Research Foundation (ORF) put together a monograph on Shaping Our Green Future: Pathways and Policies for a Net-Zero Transformation. 1 They pulled together a fantastic set of perspectives from Mr. Jayant Sinha…
Financing the green transition
New sources of capital and new instruments are required to power the green transition Green Transition is a reality: it is here and now. The recent spate of high-impact climate-related disasters across the world…
India: Getting ready for global macro resets
Second wave of Covid-19 is now behind us. Localized lockdowns are opening, economic activity is coming back to pre-pandemic levels, and vaccinations are now proceeding apace with large, assured supply over the next few…
Urban development and green finance: Blending two mega trends
Writing on LinkedIn recently, Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi said, “The 15th Finance Commission and several academics have emphasised the crucial importance of sound property taxation. The third reform…
Vaccine tracker – taking it down
Last month when the CoWIN APIs had just been released, a few of us got together and created a portal to track availability of vaccines. The portal (http://vaccineavailability.atilotia.com/) saw around 400,000 hits with…
Attracting large pools of capital for a green transition
India is a signatory and strong advocate for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and the only large country on track for emissions reduction as agreed under the Paris convention. These…
Financial planning for a family after a sudden shock
The sudden shock Over the last month many of us have had horrible, heart-wrenching stories of losses to share. In my immediate circle, I have had a relative, a batchmate, and a close business acquaintance pass away. In…
Infra investment plans: India and the USA
Two of the largest democracies have embarked on a massive capital investment planover the next few years US President Biden recently announced a two-part plan to invest in the USA: first part of the plan details a USD…
Learnings from the digital Co-WIN app
Last weekend, I was part of a rather novel experience. A group of us designed a portal that pulled data from the Co-WIN APIs to showcase where the vaccine slots were available. This was novel and interesting for two…
Modelling the vaccine market in India
A new chapter has opened up in India’s fight against Covid-19 with three big changes in April. Starting May, vaccines are now available for all adults in India. The central government is no longer the only purchaser –…
Know when vaccine slots become available
Click here to check availability for slots for those in the 18-44 age range. The full link is this: http://vaccineavailability.atilotia.com/ Use filters to check whether COVID-19 vaccination slots are available in your…
‘Moving epicenters’ – preparing India for future waves of Covid
India faced a severe second wave of Covid-19 – actionable public policy recommendations to prepare ourselves better An unexpected, unprecedented 16X surge Around end March 2021, with rapidly reducing active cases, India…
Capital and innovation: This time is different
Unlike capital chasing technological innovations in the 2010s, now technological innovations are being driven by the availability of capital.
Net-zero will require a serious effort – now!
Bill Gates’: “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster” This book should be a required reading for anyone interested in:• the “big picture” of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (where do the 51 billion tons of GHG come from),• what…
India’s USD 550 bn stimulus
Relaxation in fiscal deficit targets creates enhanced fiscal space for India: this offers an opportunity to build India Financial Express Last month was abuzz with many commentaries on the Union Budget 2021-22 – the…
Financing urban infrastructure
Empowering Urban Local Bodies to leverage the markets. India’s rapid urbanization is a well-documented story. Depending on how one counts urbanization, India has between a-third and a-half of its population already live…
Annual report of IIMA public policy ASIG
I co-lead as an alumni coordinator the IIMA Public Policy Alumni Special Interest Group’s (PP ASIG). Learn more about the IIMA PP ASIG’s activity highlights from 2020 in the #AnnualReport published recently. IIMA ASIGs…
IIM Ahmedabad public policy alumni special interest group 2020
Ico-lead as an alumni coordinator the IIMA Public Policy Alumni Special Interest Group’s (PP ASIG). Learn more about the IIMA PP ASIG’s activity highlights from 2020 in the #AnnualReport published recently.
Hedging INR for the long-term
Foreign investors with long-term commitments to Indian infrastructure need the ability to hedge their currency exposure in India. The exposure can typically last for multiple decades, especially in the context of…
Larger incomes to tax or larger taxes on incomes?
Budget 2020 cares for people’s economic aspirations, says Axis Bank’s Akhilesh Tilotia
A day in the life of an Indian
What the numbers say—how men and women spend their day differently; and how much bijli, sadak, paani can improve productivity Here’s a question that has been of interest to me: in a country of 1.4 billion people, if…
Finding investors for state debt
As States issue more debt, finding the investors who will subscribe to the issue will require expanding the current pool of investors and making the investment more lucrative. While there have been many deliberations in…
HippoBrain conversation
In 2015, I was summoned to the North Block from the office of the then Minister of State for Finance, Jayant Sinha. For somebody who worked in a bank, my first thought was that some hell had broken loose somewhere; I…
Getting the vaccine to a billion plus people
India can learn a lot from its experience in managing cash – getting a billion people what they need can be planned effectively. A vaccine for Covid-19 is expected to come sometime over the next few months – hopefully…
Making the frontier sector work
Many of the networks of value could start to become ‘utilities’ as they become more embedded in everyday lives. In the previous article, we introduced the idea of the D-sector. The three traditional sectors have a…
Defining the frontier sector
The new normal after Covid-19 requires a re-imagining of macroeconomics: we need to start defining the contours of, and measuring, the fourth sector. (First of a two-part article) “There are three estates in Parliament…
Indian aviation: Looking ahead
Aviation is amongst the worst-hit industries in Covid-19: what might change? – By Akhilesh Tilotia and Sunil Bhaskaran Before Covid-19 pandemic hit India and its aviation industry, airline traffic had been growing…
Landmark reforms in Indian agriculture
Notes from a Live Webinar co-hosted by Axis Bank and agribazaar The panel was represented by senior government officials, investors, developmental agencies, agri-industrialists and a banker. The reforms undertaken by…
Medium-term dynamics for India post Covid-19 lockdown
Shape of economic recovery will determine employment, debt and exchange rates. The immediate fiscal deficit dynamics and growth outcomes for India post Covid-19 lockdown have been the subject of intense analysis and…
Building “digital cocoons” for the population
Covid-19 highlights the importance of and urgent need to build ‘digital cocoons’ for the whole population. The Covid-19 series of lock-downs have brought very different experiences for varied segments of society: the…
Coronavirus crisis: Making your ‘Beyond COVID-19 plan’ work
COVID-19 could change entire industry ecosystems—what makes planning challenging is that it is not clear how permanent and deep the changes will be. By now you are deep in your business continuity planning (BCP)—if your…
Coronavirus: Flattening the curve
Building liquidity infrastructure and solution and protecting incomes required in the short-term; rebuilding trust in the long-term. We looked at some of the possible impacts of social distancing in the previous…
How social distancing disrupts supply chains
What the virus spread has revealed is that it is difficult to predict where it might emerge next and with what ferocity. What has surprised the world about the new Coronavirus, Covid-19, is how quickly it engulfed the…
The ladder of development and progress
Development and Progress go hand-in-hand; getting on and remaining on the ladders key to economic growth for individuals and nations. As India changed and economically progressed, it brought hope. There was indeed a…
Larger incomes to tax or larger taxes on incomes?
Budget 2020 cares for people’s economic aspirations, says Axis Bank’s Akhilesh Tilotia. India’s response to its dilemma will determine whether budgets of the next decade will have larger incomes to tax or larger taxes…
Here’s why India may end up choosing capital flows over current account flows
India may end up implicitly choosing a stance of preferring capital flows over current account flows, if it sets a GDP target in a foreign currency. A currency serves two purposes: medium of exchange and store of value.
Organizing the most perfect reunion in Asia Pacific
Organizing the Most Perfect Reunion in Asia Pacific Organizing the Most Perfect Reunion in Asia PacificDownload
State finances: Finding the monies
As the Centre and States try to find GST compensation cess monies, it is time to look beyond the present, to see how the future could unfold for State finances. The financial relationship between states and the Centre…
Fiscal architecture for a US$5 trillion economy
The evolution of India’s tax-to-GDP ratio will require significant political and social consensus—a strategic modelling and planning of tax POLICIES is required. India’s tax-to-GDP ratio at the government level has…
Fintech and legacy finance, not fintech vs legacy finance
The product design strategy of a financial service firm revolves around ‘maturity transformation’, ‘liquidity transformation’ or ‘risk transformation’. There is excitement about fintech eating traditional finance. The…
Housing needs a stronger mortgage market
A house is not merely a place to live and build a life, it is also one of the most significant assets of the family. An investment in a house roots a family to a location, giving them a significant stake in the…
Guiding markets from crisis to calm
This requires confidence, coordination and capital; resolution can’t be imposed using policy actions. When commemorating anniversaries, we tend to reserve our special attention for round-number, decadal years. Last…
A flight plan for tech regulation
The onus falls on business to continue to engender society’s and regulators’ trust in the usefulness of technology. New technologies bring with them challenges of regulation. The key challenges facing regulators in the…
Leveraging open data for policy making
Large digital databases like the GST Network can give granular insight, create predictive models; this can lead to more grounded interventions. A lot has been said about the current economic slowdown. Econometricians…
Arresting slowdown: Export focus fine, but there’s more to growth
From purely a financial perspective of current account deficit, the distinction between goods and services does not matter. The exports performance of Vietnam continues to be contrasted with that of India: the most…
India must learn from China about aircraft leasing
The announcement of this policy statement in the Budget follows the release of the ‘Rupee Raftaar’ report at the Global Aviation Summit in Mumbai in January earlier this year. The Finance Minister, in her maiden budget…
India’s future fiscal architecture: Disinvest and redesign
The knife-edge balanced nature of Government finances means that there is little leeway available for the Central and State Governments whenever there is a shortfall in receipts or an increase in expenditure. In both…
India’s current fiscal architecture: 3+4+5+6=18
Since the implementation of Goods and Services Tax (GST) in India, the Central Government is now a primary decision-maker on almost all the taxes in the country. With an effective veto power in the GST Council and its…
Airports driving new urbanisation patterns
The economic multiplier effect of airport construction is estimated to be around six times the capital invested in an airport Jayant Sinha & Akhilesh Tilotia In the previous century, Jawaharlal Nehru proclaimed dams and…
Udan air connectivity scheme: Not just a flight of fancy
By Jayant Sinha & Akhilesh Tilotia Providing regional air connectivity is an important policy goal for the government. Such services deliver a host of benefits by fulfilling latent consumer demand for convenient travel…
Powering growth through airport hubs
As the aviation market in India deepens, the creation of hubs for regional connectivity, international travel, mega- tourist destinations and freight connectivity will ensure the flow of more foreign Jayant Sinha &…
So the average Indian can fly: How aviation is being transformed from an elite to a public service
Jayant Sinha and Akhilesh Tilotia India’s aviation sector is being rapidly transformed and air travel is becoming indispensable for the general public. India is now the fastest growing major aviation market – the number…
CAD: Unless India reverses sustainably, net foreign assets may stay negative
Unless it reverses sustainably, India’s net foreign assets are expected to remain negative India’s financial relationship with the world has two large components: (1) a large trade account deficit balanced by services…
CFA Institute – Career guide India
CFA Institute Talented enough to be hired at one of the world’s leading management consulting firms, Akhilesh Tilotia, CFA, is a numbers guy at heart and, in his head, likes to chase the big picture. At Kotak…
How to prepare for US$100 oil?
A spike in prices near the next general elections could test the building up of fiscal buffers An important point that Ruchir Sharma makes in his new book, The Rise and Fall of Nations is: don’t ask what the world would…
The joys of sharing
As the practice of sharing becomes more prevalent, cities will develop their own culture, and it is fascinating to see that emerge Over the last month or so, since car-pooling apps launched their pooling or shared…
How can India escape Robin Hoodesque fate of taxing urban India to prop-up rural India
A revised estimate of the labour market in 2022 finds 500 million Indians could still be dependent on agriculture India’s consumption story is predicated upon the millennial and post-millennial demographic performing…
Building state capacity to protect citizens
For the citizen to be confident, the state has to first believe that it can enforce the rule of law In Mumbai (and this may be true in many other cities in India), many traffic signals start blinking the yellow lights…
India’s hopes hinge on its demographic dividend
The country faces many challenges in diverse sectors but reforms in education and skilling its workforce can script a new growth story India’s demographic dividend has already begun and over the next few decades will be…
Mumbai has a long way to go
Friday, July 17, 2015, 12:48 AM IST Looking all around, it appears that Mumbai’s infrastructure has developed tremendously in the last few years. Bridges, flyovers, expressways–these are all major changes in the way the…
Book review of ‘The Making of India’
Making of India: From 1947 to 2015, the complexities of our country Is the idea that India should be a hub of manufacture beset with problems of infrastructure? Updated: Jun 06, 2015 14:29 IST In 1857, the lavishly…
Meeting change in food habits
India needs to diversify its agriculture, break out of the cereals trap The country’s agriculture has mostly revolved around inputs required to make farming viable and successful. But it is high time that agriculture is…
Uday Kotak launches ‘The Making of India’ by Akhilesh Tilotia
The Making of India – book launch Uday Kotak observes, “Markets and economies worldwide are in a state of constant tumult led on by a string of known and unknown unknowns. In a connected world, the ever changing global…
Dr. Ben S Bernanke, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve in conversation with Mr. Uday Kotak at the second Kotak Presidium
Original document currently unavailable.
Missing women in India’s labour force
Over the past seven years, India has strongly economically implemented a minimum-wage regime via MGNREGA: We hypothesise that this may have driven rural women out of the workforce leading to jobless growth. Basic…
Time ripe for agriculture
The outlook for agriculture in India is changing: price rises are lifting realisations , which are being reinvested in productivity growth. The outlook for agriculture in India is changing: price increases are lifting…
Family office 101: Managing family wealth and legacy
If the needs of families gave birth to family office concept, the changing business environment has made it a business opportunity today and Financial Planners in India can take a lead in utilizing this opportunity.
Realty funds are now offering innovative investment avenues to the middle class and HNIs.
Realty funds offering innovative investment avenues Pradeep was ecstatic. He had just received a larger than expected year-end bonus. After a vacation to Shimla with family, he was now wondering how to invest the…
Financial lessons for the newly married
If you have exchanged vows recently, you would need to rejig your expenses and savings structure. Here’s how you should go about it. Now that both of you have decided to take the plunge, among the various angles that…
Why should you think long term?
“While thinking of equity investments, think long term” – goes oft-repeated words of wisdom. Is it true only when the markets touch these unprecedented heights or should we keep this in mind even during saner times?
Jumpy Re: Right time to send money to India?
– part 3The case of dealing with a historical exposure is like determining the right proportion of currencies that you should have in your portfolio. By Akhilesh Tilotia & Ramganesh Iyer In the last two articles of…
NRIs need to handle the jumpy Re with care
– part 1 NRIs have been hit hard by the appreciating rupee. Here is the first part of a three part series on what the appreciating rupee means for them. Investing tips for beginners By Akhilesh Tilotia & Ramganesh Iyer…
How to cash in on your bonus
Getting a bonus calls for a celebration. With the right investment tools, you can put your bonus to good use and create wealth. Finance experts, Krishanmurthi Vijyan, CEO, JP Morgan Asset management; Rajivdeep Bajaj, MD…
Beware of ‘lifestyle inflation’
‘Beware of inflation: it eats into your savings,’ your financial advisor would have warned you a number of times. What you need to worry about it not just the inflation number that the government publishes every Friday…
NRIs invests in an emotional angle
For many NRIs, investing in India is more reliable because of tax benefits & better growth opportunities. In our previous article, we looked at some of the issues faced by the professional NRIs when planning their…
3,500-year-old investment tips that still work!
A book was cast in stone more than 3,500 years ago in Babylon and was found by a British professor late last century. What impressed him — and helped him come out of a debt crisis — were the inscriptions on how to…
Investment advice for youngsters
In your early 20s and planning to make your first investment? The first and foremost, keep aside three times your monthly expenses, before you begin. Next, invest in life cover and health insurance. Many recommend…
Here’s how to invest in an SIP
– part 6 of 6 Mutual funds offer a variety of options through which you can invest in or divest from them: each option has its own advantages and it is very helpful to know of your various options. Lump sum investment…
Tax liability on your mutual fund
– part 5 of 6 When you invest, you can look at the investment from two perspectives: to generate a regular periodic return or to invest for a long term, without bothering about the intermediate returns. Mutual funds are…
The risks of investing in a mutual fund
– part 4 of 6 We have seen the advantages of investing in a mutual fund. Now let us look at some of the risks and costs of investing in the same. Risks of investing in a mutual fund: The biggest risk of investing in a…
6 advantages of investing in a mutual fund
– part 3 of 6 Having grasped the basic of mutual funds, let us try to understand why you as an investor would want to invest in them. Professional expertise: Investing requires skill. It requires a constant study of the…
Mutual funds, demystified
– part 2 of 6 We have seen the basic types of assets into which a mutual fund might invest: equity and debt, and how this choice impacts the risk and return characteristics of the funds. However, you would have noticed…
Learn the easy way, apply rules of thumb
Financial planning and products are all about number work and most of it is fairly complex. It helps if there are certain simplifications to make life easy. One way is to have rules of thumb, which can be quickly…
What are mutual funds? Where do they invest?
– part 1 of 6 It is almost always assumed that anyone reading an analysis on mutual funds (or the fund management industry) knows the intricacies of the same. This is not universally true and, at all times, there are a)…
Do your homework before picking a financial planner
Choosing a financial advisor is like choosing your family physician. Once you are associated with him, it is difficult to restart with another. You have decided to do long term planning for yourself, but a big question…
Making money through debt
“Where do I park my money for the best returns?” is a standard investor query. The standard answer might well be, “put it in equities and forget it for 5-7 years.” But, while there is no denying the power of equities to…
How big should my nest-egg be?
One needs to understand how big the retirement corpus needs to be to lead a comfortable life in the golden years Aman Jain, 27, is an MBA from a top-rated business school with a great job with a major retail chain. He…
Two articles in the India Infrastructure Review 2004, 3i Network (IDFC, IIM-A, IIT-K)
Swapnil Pawar and I wrote two articles in the India Infrastructure Review in 2004 while we were second-year students of the Post Graduate Diploma in Business Management (PGDBM) at Indian Institute of Management…
