“People have come to a conclusion that risk in Equities is close to zero by seeing the returns of last 5 years.”
“Be it Worli or Gurgaon or Bandra real estate, Gold or Silver, Indian Equities, everything has gone up substantially in last 5 years.”
“So convincing people of moderate returns has become the biggest job.”
- S. Naren
Back in 2024 when India won the T-20 WC,we had celebrations & crowd gatherings at Mumbai & many other places for many days
Even then I had made this point we Indians are ridiculously directionless
Siya's case makes that belief even more evident now
I mean it's a tragic murder case but aimless janta is queuing up for that as well & to do what?
Just timepass & gossip!
India's demographic dividend is actually mostly a disaster!
#SIYA #Ketan
I think India has completely misread the biggest economic shift of the last decade.
Unfortunately the Government of India has failed. Not marginally. Not partially. It has failed in a big way.
For years we have been told that India is the fastest-growing large economy in the world. That our demographics are unmatched. That our consumption story is intact. That global investors cannot ignore us.
Yet look at what has actually happened.
Over the last 4–5 years the world witnessed one of the biggest reallocations of capital in modern history.
Trillions of dollars moved.
The US attracted capital into AI. Taiwan became the semiconductor capital of the world. South Korea became a key beneficiary of the memory and AI boom. Vietnam emerged as a manufacturing destination. Singapore strengthened its position as Asia's capital hub. UAE became a magnet for global entrepreneurs and family offices.
And India?
India largely watched from the sidelines while continuing to sell the same consumption story.
The numbers tell the story.
Net FDI inflows into India have fallen sharply from their peak years.
Private equity activity has slowed materially.
Venture capital funding is a fraction of what it was during the 2021 cycle.
Foreign investors have been net sellers for prolonged periods.
And despite all this there seems to be very little introspection within the system..
Instead every explanation sounds familiar.
"It's a global issue."
"It's temporary."
"It's an AI bubble."
"It's because of interest rates."
At some point we need to stop explaining away reality.
Capital does not care about narratives.
Capital follows opportunity.
And we failed to create enough of it.
China built manufacturing ecosystems that are still decades ahead of us. America built the world's most powerful innovation engine. Taiwan built the semiconductor backbone of the digital economy.
India built compliance.
Ask any foreign investor.
They worry about:
* tax uncertainty
* regulatory complexity
* currency depreciation
* capital movement restrictions
* compliance burden
* endless approvals
These are not ideological issues. These are execution failures.
What makes this even more worrying is that India continues to depend heavily on a consumption-led growth model.
But where does that consumption come from?
A large part comes from:
* salaried professionals
* IT employees
* financial services
* real estate-linked employment
* urban middle class spending
Now look at what AI is doing.
Whether people like it or not this is no longer a passing theme.
It is already reshaping hiring.
It is already reshaping productivity.
It is already changing how businesses think about incremental headcount.
If India misses this wave as well then the consequences will not be limited to the IT sector.
The ripple effects could hit:
* housing demand
* automobiles
* travel
* entertainment
* premium consumption
* retail spending
The second-order impact may be larger than the first-order impact.
And yet where is the urgency?
Where is the national AI mission at scale?
Where are the world-class research incentives?
Where are the regulatory reforms to attract global capital?
Where is the accountability from bureaucrats who have repeatedly missed these shifts?
The most dangerous assumption being made today is that demographics will save India.
Demographics are not an advantage by default.
They are only an advantage if jobs are created faster than aspirations.
Otherwise demographics become pressure.
And pressure eventually becomes unrest.
The world is moving faster than at any point in modern history.
The uncomfortable truth is that India is not competing against its own past anymore.
India is competing against countries that are moving with far greater speed and urgency.
The next 3 years will decide whether India becomes a genuine economic superpower or remains a country endlessly talking about its potential.
Potential does not attract capital. Execution does.
Obama left office at 55.
Donald Trump became president at 70.
Bill Gates founded Microsoft at 19.
Colonel Sanders founded KFC at 65
Tatum O'Neal won an Oscar at 10.
Christopher Plummer won an Oscar at 82
Mark Zuckerberg was a billionaire at 22.
Warren Buffett was a billionaire at 56.
People might seem ahead of you.
People might seem behind you.
We're all running on our own time.
Don't ever get it twisted,
See most people or public are better off focusing on their main business or job than on equity markets
Unless equity markets itself is their main profession where then they stand a chance of beating the markets and making disproportionate wealth
You have to be a serious investor/ trader to actually make market beating returns, that is just the reality that most people don't like
Sure you can get lucky at times without being a serious investor/ trader, but luck only works in Bull markets and Bull Market are not forever
Stop being a loser.
• Wake up at 3 AM every day
• Run a full marathon before breakfast
• Eat 700 grams of protein daily
• Make $100,000 trading before 10 AM
• Have 21 streams of income by age 21
• Sleep 3 hours a day
• Read 27 books every week
• Take 678 cold plunges a year
• Meditate for 6 hours before sunrise
• Launch 3 startups every quarter
• Buy a rental property every month
• Do 10,000 push-ups on rest days
• Learn a new language every weekend
• Delete all contacts from your phone
• Never watch TV, movies, sports
• Do Korean skincare every 2 hours
• Network with aliens
• Build a personal brand on Jupiter
• Listen to podcasts at 4× speed
• Track 147 health metrics daily
• Retire by 24
The social media outrage over incidents like "Chaiyya Chaiyya" on railway platforms or Garba at airports needs a balanced view.
Yes, such behaviour reflects poor civic sense and should be called out.
But let's also remember that these are often ordinary middle-class families who have worked incredibly hard to build better lives for themselves. They deserve some respect.
Civic sense isn't something most Indians are systematically taught - in school and universities.
We learn from what we see around us every day & unfortunately, our public spaces, infrastructure, and enforcement haven't always set the best examples.
Another reality of our times is the social media attention economy. People are increasingly willing to do extreme, unusual, or attention-grabbing things for likes, views, and followers. This isn't an India-specific problem; it's a global phenomenon.
Correct the behaviour. Educate. Create awareness.
But don't look down upon people who are themselves products of the environment they grew up in and the incentives created by today's social media culture.
Many have talked about how people are needlessly projecting a future for Vaibhav and either predicting how he will be found out or how if he is so good now, he will only get better.
I have a problem with all projections about Vaibhav. The nature of genius can be at times fleeting. Genius is not a fixed deposit on which you get to see the so called power of compounding in finance influencer terms.
Last time we propped up a teenage prodigy like that when we compared him to Lara, Sehwag, Tendulkar in his debut series itself and we all know what happened to him. Not everything grows northwards. Vaibhav may never play like he did in 2026 and he should know that it is perfectly fine. Or he may become the next Bradman and that's fine too. He should be (and more importantly we should be) content with getting to witness a genius at work even for one season even if that is all we ever get.
I can say this based on minor personal experience as well. I write code for a living. But I have never been able to code or problem solve as clearly or as effortlessly as I did in my teenage years. I have been told by people that "ohh based on how good you were, you should have done much more in tech". I had struggled with such comments and my own self appraisal of my career for several years.
It wasn't like I became a brat and didn't work hard or got into bad company or bad habits. None of that. It's just that my mind never ticked as gloriously as it did in my teenage years. It took years of maturity to accept and understand the fact that it wasn't in my control and I didn't owe it to myself or anyone else to do anything with my life, and also what I did was enough and I should be proud of being able to hold my own in a demanding profession for best part of two decades.
And I worry for Vaibhav coz if it took me so much effort to grow out of the shadows of self imposed expectations even as there were only a handful of people witnessing my life. How would the current national obsession handle it if he falls short of his own expectations. I hope it doesn't happen and he comes good on all the promise. But yea, I worry sometimes.
Harsha Bhogle 🗣️: "My moment of greatest dismay, the near surrender by IPL teams to social media and the resultant invitation to trolls. Things are getting ugly.
The other day someone was telling me they saw the buses come in. First bus with the players, second bus support staff, families, etc. — maybe some of the support staff in the main bus — and then a separate bus for the digital team. You're constantly chasing clicks, you're constantly chasing likes, you're constantly looking for provocative material. You're constantly goading players on to produce provocative material.
And the players, they play cricket where they're not always in control of what they're doing. They're not always very savvy. And so we're seeing some things come out that shouldn't. And there there was more than one occasion when I looked at a few things. I don't go on social media that much because it often dismays me, but I looked at some of the things and I said, are IPL franchises cricket teams, or are IPL franchises social media entities in a relentless search for audiences, for likes, for constantly putting cameras everywhere, for constantly picking up things, for constantly pushing things out?
No. Players must focus on becoming better players. Franchises must focus on becoming better franchises. I'm sure they are. I know one doesn't come to the exclusion of the other, but this year I've seen a very alarming trend towards focusing on social media and getting the social media influencers in. I've nothing against influencers. Look, times are changing. You are very good at what you do. Fine. But making that the focus is a worry and it's starting to harm players already."
"Just 0.5 seconds behind Usain Bolt!" Arey didi, this is not an inter-house school race where you shave off a second the next year and catch up.
10.09 puts Gurindervir at 524th on the World Athletics all-time list, which means 523 sprinters in history have already gone faster than him. The 2025 World Championship final was decided in the 9.7s range and the auto-qualifying standard for the event itself is 10.00 flat.
Gurindervir's run is a genuine breakthrough for Indian athletics, but going from 10.09 to contending at a global final is going to require a much, much bigger leap.
There is no humourist like history.
The yellow line take-off is the only reason you are being told that US Tech is the only place to invest.
All Indices are Total Returns Indices.
All in USD terms.
Start date: From earliest date of all TRI indices availability together.
@Tara_Deshpande Can the families of any Jawan, Naik, Havildar, Subedar, Naib Subedar get access to Delhi gymkhana? They also serve the nation by putting their lives at risk, or dare I say, greater risk?
There was a time when on his one appeal whole country used to come outside and start banging utensils.
Now when he is making a more logical appeal of stopping people to cut fuel uses, not to buy gold, stop foreign vacations and do WFH to stop INR depreciation, people are questioning him and asking what Govt is doing if public has to do everything.
That's the report card of 12 years of PM modi in power. People are now looking for accountability, not just election speech.
Dear @narendramodi ji,
If Indian cities and villages are kept greener and cleaner, our roads are made safer, food adulteration is strictly controlled, Indian heritage sites are better maintained, and public transport becomes more reliable and comfortable, many Indians would prefer spending their vacations in India rather than travelling abroad.
People realized that the PM is always in election mode. Even after being in power for more than 10 yrs, he accuses his predecessors !! He and his party do not walk the talk. Citizens need solutions not gyaan. Sounds preachy.
X is a ruthless place on the best of days. Ever since the PM's request to WFH, save fuel, limit foreign trips etc - that ruthlessness has soared
Unfortunate.
PM Modi was a man who had been able to build a sense of nationalism and unity. We have reverted back to pre-2014 era
My current mental model basis what I am seeing around me and at InfoEdge in all our verticals - Naukri, 99acres, Jeevansathi and Shiksha.
1) AI is fundamentally deflationary for businesses.
2) When the cost of intelligence drops toward zero, the cost of doing many things drops with it.
3) Everyone becomes more productive but no one stays differentiated for long.
4) The natural outcome? Price compression. Margin pressure, Commoditization.
5) We’ve seen this with the internet, cloud, SaaS. AI is doing it to cognition itself.
But this is only half the story.
6) AI is deflationary for existing markets
and expansionary for new ones
The big mistake
7) Using AI just to do the same things cheaper. That’s a race to the bottom.
8) The real question is, What becomes possible now that was previously impossible?
Three ways I see AI creating real advantage
1) Solving problems that were too expensive to solve or not solvable earlier
2) Serving customers who couldn’t be served before
3) Delivering experiences and quality that wasn’t possible to deliver before
In other words
Don’t just lower costs. Expand the market. Because when capabilities commoditise , value shifts to,
– Distribution and Customer Relationships
– Brand
– Trust
– Proprietary data
– Ecosystems
The winners in the AI era won’t be the most companies which are the most efficient.
They’ll be companies with the best imagination