Debashish

Is time speeding up?
Infinite Circles Investment Trust. AIF category 3. SEBI reg no IN/AIF3/25-26/2002

[Debashish @DEBASE3]

@ActusDei It's not falling short. Most of the applications are high value entries on leverage which will come closer to the end of the period.

[Debashish @DEBASE3]

@Crompton_India is a very clever company. They will offer a warranty on their(Chinese) BLDC fans and not service customer complaints while in warranty. Aim is to sell an AMC instead. @irdaindia should license Consumer durable cos as they only sell insurance and make more revenue

[Debashish @DEBASE3]

If jobs are not available, deflation sets in soon and prices collapse.
The jobs aren't going to be in any field which can be disrupted by a dude with a laptop. Reversal of the trend started in Engg schools in 90's. Entrepreneurs can still be.
@coolcoder56

[Asmit @coolcoder56]

I am jealous of people who entered the IT job market in the early 2000s.

My uncle got a job in Motorola in 2005 and he is now senior engineering manager at Google.

He has now owns 2 flats in Bengaluru and 1 luxury villa in Whitefield. His rental income is only around 5 lakhs from real estate. And he helped both of his sons get a job at MNC through his connections.

Some people are really lucky in life 🥲

[Debashish @DEBASE3]

@ActusDei @PremalMadhavji @thefynprint @PremalMadhavji So good to see you...looking dapper as always! And that is an interesting gig!

[Debashish @DEBASE3]

INR was falling well before Oil spiked.... The 25% base tariff was 8-9% worse off vs competitor nations...so a similar quantum of depreciation was a logical response function @1shankarsharma

[Shankar Sharma @1shankarsharma]

Precisely what I have been saying & writing for the last 6+ months: that India's CAD is going to be under massive stress because of the US ( and UK, Europe Trade Deals) Trade Deal:

the SOLE purpose of the Deal is to reduce our surplus to zero or even a deficit.

It's unmitigated disaster for India and the CAD, INR.

And that's why the INR has been struggling even after oil has crashed.

See my interview in Business Standard last week wrt to the Trade Deal..

And now you have proof.

[Debashish @DEBASE3]

The "creators" of Meta, Netflix, SpaceX etc were not billionaires when starting out....
To successfully "create" things, you need an audience to sell to.
At 2500$ per capita - not much of an audience which exists.
Let's scale to > 10k and the realities change
@avijeet_writes

[Avijeet | Personal Branding Strategist @avijeet_writes]

I think India will never be able to produce any global-level companies like Meta, Netflix, and SpaceX. .

Not because the government is bad. Not because the people are not talented. Not because we don't have the capability. There is a fundamental reason why we can't do it.

It is the gross negligence and complete ignorance of the Indian capitalist billionaire class .

In the Western society many companies spend their profits on research and development of products and scaling it to the global level

But the Indian capitalist class is only money-minded.

They just want to milk 140 crore Indians by providing some commodity or service-based product and never intend to spend a dime on research purposes.

[Debashish @DEBASE3]

Most importantly - finance is unlikely to be a lucrative profession for a long time to come. If you are graduating, potentially more rewarding if building something in the real world

[Pankaj Tibrewal @pankajtibre]

Weekend thoughts:

This summer, we have been receiving an unusually high number of requests for internships and associate level openings.

What has surprised me is that many of these requests are coming from students from reputed institutes both in India as well as overseas specially from non finance backgrounds who now want to explore careers in finance.

I can understand why. Campus placements and internship opportunities seem much tougher this year than what we have seen in the recent past.

While responding to these requests, I found myself reflecting on a few lessons that I have learned over the years.

For those at the beginning of their career:

First, don’t be afraid of hard work. The early years of your career are not meant to be comfortable. They are meant to help you learn, build skills, make mistakes and develop character. The effort you put in during these years compounds for decades.

Second, stay humble and empathetic. People often underestimate how far humility, good behaviour and the ability to work with others can take them.

Third, follow your passion, not just the industry that appears to be paying the most at a point in time. Every industry goes through cycles. What’s hot today may not be hot tomorrow.

And finally, a small observation after looking at hundreds of CVs over the years.

Many resumes today show frequent job changes after very short stints.

Of course, every situation is different. But sometimes I feel youngsters are in a hurry.

Give an organisation time to understand you. Give yourself time to learn. Give your manager and mentors an opportunity to invest in you.

The biggest opportunities, responsibilities and learning often come after people have seen you perform consistently over a period of time.

To all the students navigating a difficult job market: keep learning, stay curious, stay grounded, and keep showing up.

In the long run, your first mentor will matter far more than your first pay cheque.

#Mentorship #CareerAdvice #Leadership

[Debashish @DEBASE3]

Great thought but where is the money and resources to execute on it,...and that's without even counting the power and water needed. Invent biological compute and we will have the advanced models....
@sidduu96

[Sid 🇮🇳 @sidduu96]

India will never be able to develop its indigenous AI models as long as people like him are anywhere near the power structure to drive or influence the decision making.

With a single stroke, the US has denied the right to use Claude's Fable 5 and Mythos 5 to any foreign national or entity. Clearly strengthening the argument against his point of "real Ai divide won't be between countries", US has its own, India doesn't, the divide is here.

Mass adoption of AI can only be possible without any hindrance when you have your own models, working for you. Without developing your own models, you can't expect mass adoption, when you are always at the mercy of foreign players for access and pricing.

[Debashish @DEBASE3]

@InvesysCapital George Noble is an ex client of mine and at one point was considered as one of the most intelligent hedge fund managers on the street. Has had a very tough time of things in the last decade or so, but he is smart enough to know what he is talking about

[Debashish @DEBASE3]

Garbage sprouting for views and likes!

[Pankaj Arora 🇮🇳 @Panks_Arora]

Dubai: 36°C
Riyadh: 38°C
Doha: 37°C

Meanwhile in India:
Delhi: 45°C
Nagpur: 46°C
Jaipur: 44°C

Desert cities are now cooler than many Indian cities.

This is not just climate change.
It is also years of poor urban planning, endless concrete expansion, disappearing trees, and zero focus on livable cities.

And still 18% GST on ACs.

[Debashish @DEBASE3]

Biggest issue is to solve working cap issues of Fertilizer cos so they can do capex for production and sourcing. GST on gas, Green Hydrogen with GST, Pilots using CBDC with embedded fertilizer token like an NFT. Organic fert needs phased rollout. @Nithin0dha

[Nithin Kamath @Nithin0dha]

India spends $20+ billion on imported fertiliser and raw materials for fertiliser production.

Just like oil, this is another critical import dependency, especially given agriculture's centrality to the Indian economy.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has brutally exposed this vulnerability. Energy prices have risen, fertiliser supply routes have been disrupted, and urea prices have shot up. The pain will eventually reach already beleaguered Indian farmers.

To make things worse, there’s a reasonable probability of a weak monsoon.

So the question I have is: what can we do to reduce this dependency?
Can we scale sustainable farming practices?
Can we reduce excessive fertiliser use without hurting yields?
Can we help farmers use more organic manure generated on their own farms?
Can we build alternatives around bio-inputs, green hydrogen, ammonia, biogas, and other decentralised systems?

I’m not an expert, but I’ve been wondering about these things as I've been reading more about El Niño and the worsening energy crisis.

Some of our portfolio companies are already working on bits and pieces of this.

Akshayakalpa, for example, is doing a lot of work to educate farmers on sustainable farming practices, including the use of organic manure generated on their farms. Many of their farms also use biogas systems, which become even more relevant during times like this, when gas prices rise, and natural gas supply chains become fragile.

Ossus is working on green hydrogen, which could reduce emissions in ammonia production, one of the most carbon-intensive parts of the fertiliser value chain.

Marin elixir is working on organic, sustainably produced seaweed extracts and biostimulants.

Fertiliser is one of those boring but critical areas where India needs more founders, more experiments, and more patient capital. Self-sufficiency is not optional here.

If there are entrepreneurs working to reduce India’s fertiliser dependency, improve soil health, develop better bio-inputs, green ammonia, biogas, or other serious alternatives, we’d love to back them through @Rainmatterin.

[Debashish @DEBASE3]

Their solar cos were IPO-ing in 2006-07. High speed rail build started in 2004. They had close to their current steel and cement capacities by then. Their shipbuilding to challenge Jap/Kor started then @DivaJain2
We need to un-twiddle our thumbs and get a move on systemically

[Diva Jain @DivaJain2]

Great read. Chinese started working on battery tech in 2005. BYD launched its first EV on indigenous batteries in 2009. CHN Govt gave $61 bn support from 2005 to 2017 when Chinese finally cracked battery tech.

Easy to criticize Indian companies without taking this in to account.

[Debashish @DEBASE3]

Very well articulated by @ValueWithPrem

Index fund is a bet on the past. Useful for asset allocation, NOT a bet on delta in mkts/eco.

Entrepreneur bets on delta esp as AI-> jobs questionable and force multiplication possible

Tokenization converges delta with mkts.

[Prem Soni @ValueWithPrem]

You have been dangerously over romanticising compound interest.

We have a whole generation of 25 year olds passively putting 50k/month into index funds, waiting to get rich at 65. It's spreadsheet wealth. Many have no bigger ambition beyond this.

You cannot get rich by outsourcing your money to a fund manager for 40 years. You have to take concentrated, brutal, active risks in your 20s and 30s.

That’s why the wealth gap will explode over the next 20 years.

• Build a business.
• Own distribution.
• Master a supply chain.
• Put your capital to work today.

Don’t let your best years waiting for compound interest to save you at 60.

[Debashish @DEBASE3]

@mynameis_rajesh @mohak_ailani Doesn't need exports necessarily although ofcourse that won't hurt. Import substitution+ domestic supply side reforms work as well. Stabilizes the current ac. And if the Capital ac is big enough to absorb capital..esp Bonds..then the virtuous cycle kicks in.

[Debashish @DEBASE3]

@blackmetalmania @AstroSharmistha You and Dimmu Borgir

[Debashish @DEBASE3]

On the contrary, RBI imposing limits is an automatic safeguard or else people will be wiped clean. Investing into areas you have no clue about is a recipe for disaster
@jpmartin

[Jose Paul Martin @jpmartin]

The MF route to international exposure is becoming very unreliable. No sane person can plan his investments with such flip flop.

It's about time SEBI scrapped this cap and let markets function the way they are supposed - as free markets.

If the rupee is weak, that's because of policy.

[Debashish @DEBASE3]

At 25% tariff, India was 10% worse off vs peers. So a 10% depr since May'25 was the short term mitigant. In that period fwd premia expansion was hardly 50bps. Ergo ..managed depreciation. @harshmadhusudan

[Harsh Gupta Madhusudan @harshmadhusudan]

This piece starts with a factual error. The rupee did not fall 12% in 4 months but in the last year. More substantively, it is correct the problem is not with inflation or trade or fiscal etc. It is not even on interest differentials as india is more sensitive to equity flows than bond flows. problem is indeed on capital account - FPI outflows and to a lesser extent gold. On FPI, few people have made this point while the whole narrative is on AI etc: that structural DII bid mechanically means FPI sell unless there is more supply (IPO/QIP/promoter sales). As March data showed, SIP book remains surprisingly strong overall and April has actually seen a sharp market rebound even as blockade continues.

I agree with the authors that exports are not stimulated in the short term given the india basket at these levels, so that is not an immediate mitigating effect either. Hence in the very short term unless there is some gold policy action, crude falling, high bond inflows, many more IPOs or AI slowdown: FPI outflows will likely continue in the very short term. But FDI gross FY26 hit ~$90B and net ~$10B after zero/negative for FY25.

Gold imports have shrunk in March. Aggregate bond index inclusion is again up in the air this fall after the 3 EM indices being done. PPP/MER ratio remains 4.75 (95/20), so that is clearly very oversold (former CEO of Niti Ayog just wrote a piece on this point which I have been talking about.) I think this "problem" is likely to be resolved by a melt-up in the Indian equities over the next couple of years whereby even DII and FII both flows get neutralised by new paper and promoter sales. RBI has not yet done FCNR a la 2013 and MoF has not done gold crackdown - I maintain we are going back to 80s to begin with.

[Debashish @DEBASE3]

My first Hinglish podcast. We get into the Rabbit hole of global macro (How events from Covid to Ukraine, Tariffs and Iran are interconnected), hard decisions in front of India (and its investment implications). Enjoy! Shout to @ThisOrThatIndia for doing this! To be continued..

[This Or That @ThisOrThatIndia]

The world's real debt isn't $30 trillion. It's closer to 20x global GDP. That's the hidden derivatives layer no government has to file.

@DEBASE3 explains the whole machine on the latest episode 👇

https://t.co/OTB2zcPDXM

[Debashish @DEBASE3]

I doubt one needs any scholarly wisdom to predict the possibility of an epic catastrophe...maybe a tad more helpful to predict on how to avoid it! @RnaudBertrand

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

Shiping Tang is one of China's most distinguished International Relations scholars (a Professor of International Relations at Fudan University, one of China's best).

We might want to pay attention...

[Debashish @DEBASE3]

War is a feature and not a bug in a multipolar world. Expect more in coming years. Non-zero probability of us starting one too.

Clean macro -> need to bet on staying relevant. Else it's a demographic trap of perennial low income status

@monikahalan

[Monika Halan 🇮🇳 @monikahalan]

The war we did not start threatens to slow down the growth momentum that was going to be 2026-27.
The clean macro story with good gdp growth, low inflation, declining fiscal deficit, good reserves and a comfortable current account deficit that we entered this war with gives elbow room to policy choices.

Volatile year ahead, so don't make any big moves and just stay with your plan.

My oped in @htTweets

https://t.co/QS2oBYaeku