Rajesh Jain outlined the first part in a pathway to creating an innovative plan in the mobile data space. Here is the second part.
Rajesh believes that there is no better market than India for launching the new paradigm and the next platform.
Rajesh Jain is placing bets on digital devices (mobiles and PCs) and their increasing use, and that they’ll help reinvent the Indian political scene.
I’ll be rooting for him to win.
The Economist profiles Sridhar Vembu who, they feel, can take a shot a shot at becoming software’s Michael Dell.
In the mid-1990s, though, venture capitalists gave Mr Vembu the cold shoulder when he shopped around a business plan for software that helped to manage telecoms networks.
This rejection, says Mr Vembu, led him to do the right thing: be frugal and stay independent. When they set up the firm in 1996 he and his five co-founders had to use their own money. Having no cash to waste—unlike so many others in those giddy times—they based AdventNet in Pleasanton, an hour’s drive east of Silicon Valley and much cheaper. Even today it has only a dozen employees there; the rest are in Chennai. Such penny-pinching allowed the company to survive when the telecoms bubble burst in 2001.
With no outside investors, AdventNet could switch to a different business. Venture capitalists would probably have killed off a few of the 18 web-based applications that AdventNet has since come up with under the Zoho name. Several are essentially interchangeable with services that are already offered by Google, the online giant, and will be by Microsoft, its main competitor.
Yet Zoho is no mere clone of Google’s applications. It is the most comprehensive suite of web-based programmes for small businesses, including even services to keep track of a firm’s employees and its customers.
Sramana Mitra, entrepreneur and strategy consultant in Silicon Valley for nearly 25 years, has a very interesting series of essays on future of multiple entrepreneurship in India. It is currently on to its seventeenth running segment and one can do no better than introduce it by quoting from Sramana’s preface to his Vision India 2020 Series:
I invite readers to take a journey with me into the future through the minds of multiple entrepreneurs, who by addressing the opportunities I see today, will perhaps shape the future of India.
But in this series, we will close our eyes, and exist in this future, and BE each entrepreneur.
Vijay Anand, an Indian entrepreneur, passionate and driven by technologies related to the Mobile, VoIP, and Emerging Internet space, is quite passionate about the startup ecosystem and is involved heavily in the creation of vibrant communities here in India.
He is the Founder of Proto.in, the startup ecosystem body, and has been a driving force in being involved in community events such as Barcamp Chennai, Blogcamp, Wikicamp, Podworks, Open Coffee Club in Chennai and seeding such similar initiatives across the country.
This was one post I really could relate to.
Rajesh Jain post on Digital India
Excerpts:
Pooja lives in with her parents in a modest two-bedroom apartment in a middle-class neighborhood in Mumbai. She is studying in class V. It is early in the evening. Entering the living room, she switches on a light and then pushes a button on a little blue box the size of a shoe-box sitting next to a monitor. The monitor lights up immediately displays what looks like a PC desktop. A little dialog box blinks, “Who is it?” She types her login name “pooja101″. “What is our secret word, Pooja?” She responds.In a flash the desktop changes to resume where she had left off earlier that day when she had accessed “MyComputer” at the school computing center. An ad appears in a little window. It lasts for about 10 seconds informing her of a sale on school supplies going on in her neighborhood supermarket. She clicks on the “ToDo List” and makes a note in there to buy some stationery and dismisses the ad window.
Open letter to SEBI by Personalfn.com, a financial planning initiative. It can be reached at info@personalfn.com. I have their permission to reproduce the article.
Dear Mr. Chairman:
The fact sheet of a mutual fund scheme that is released by its Asset Management Company (AMC) is a vital source of information for investors. However, in our view, the information provided by AMCs in these fact sheets is often inadequate and/or incoherent.
At Personalfn, we have always championed the cause of investors. To that end, we present a wish list for disclosure of information in mutual fund fact sheets.
1. Expense ratio The ratio represents the expenses charged by the AMC to the mutual fund for various purposes like investment fees, marketing and selling expenses including agents’ commission and transaction costs among others. These expenses eat into the returns clocked by the investor; expenses in fact have a very significant impact on long-term returns of the scheme. Given its importance, the expense ratio should be published in the fact sheet every month. At present only a handful of AMCs follow such a disclosure policy.
2. Portfolio turnover ratio The portfolio turnover ratio is a measure of how frequently stocks have been bought and sold by the fund manager. The same can offer investors an insight into the fund manager’s investment style. Of course, a higher ‘churn’ also has an implication on the expense ratio. There is a need to ensure that AMCs disclose portfolio turnover ratios in the monthly fact sheet. More importantly, the same needs to be computed in a standard manner. Among the AMCs that choose to reveal portfolio turnover ratios, some make use of a rolling 12-Mth period for the computation, while others consider the financial year as the starting point.
3. Average portfolio maturity It is common to find debt fund fact sheets mentioning the portfolio’s average maturity. As the name suggests, the figure denotes the time to maturity for all the debt instruments in the fund’s portfolio expressed as an average. Conversely, there are others which simply mention the duration (the unit for which is a time period i.e. days/months as well). However, duration (albeit vital) is a distinct measure from the average portfolio maturity. Duration is the tenure for which a portfolio of bonds or a bond must be held, for the investor to be immune to interest rate changes. There is a need to ensure that all debt funds disclose both their average maturities and durations in their fact sheets. Also a standard computation method must be followed so that investors can conduct a meaningful comparison between like schemes across fund houses.
4. Fund manager profile The fact sheets should unambiguously declare the fund manager responsible for every mutual fund scheme along with his profile. Similarly, the period for which he has been managing the given scheme should be mentioned as well. This will prove particularly relevant in situations wherein a successful fund manager, who was responsible for an impressive performance, has been replaced by another fund manager. Investors who are about to get invested in the scheme based on its track record, should be made aware that a new fund manager is now in charge.
5. Is the fund manager invested in the scheme? It is always comforting for consumers to know that the “cook eats his own cooking”. Similarly, a fund manager investing in a fund managed by him can be source of confidence for investors. The monthly fact sheet should have a disclosure in terms of whether or not the fund manager is invested in the scheme.
6. Unambiguous investment objectives Investment objectives like “to achieve log-term capital appreciation” are commonplace in the mutual funds segment. Such objectives are inconclusive and offer no aid to a prospective investor who is contemplating investing in the fund. An ideal investment objective must be unambiguous and comprehensive.
For example, the objective could read, “a growth-styled fund, the fund aims to achieve long-term capital appreciation by investing predominantly (at least 70% of assets) in stocks from the large cap segment. Long-term being defined as at least 5 years and companies with a market capitalisation of over Rs 50 bn (Rs 5,000 crores) at the time of investment qualifying as the large cap segment. The fund can also invest upto 30% of its assets in debt/money market instruments for defensive considerations”.
A rigidly defined investment objective ensures that the investor is decidedly aware of the investment proposition offered by the fund and can make an informed investment decision. The regulator should make this mandatory. Furthermore, the Board of Trustees can at preset time intervals (say semi-annually) offer their comments on the AMC’s adherence/success in achieving the stated investment objective.
7. Portfolio disclosure AMCs have increasingly stopped disclosing entire portfolios in their fact sheets (the printed versions, which are sent to investors). For example, in the case of equity funds most fact sheets simply reveal the top 10 stock holdings. So the fact sheet for an equity fund which holds say 50% of net assets in the top 10 stock holdings doesn’t reveal half the portfolio. Similarly there is also a case for more meaningful disclosure. Related sector holdings can be clubbed to reveal the true diversification levels in the fund’s portfolio. For example, holdings in related sectors like Auto and Auto Ancillaries can be clubbed and shown under a common heading i.e. Auto.
The regulator should make it mandatory for schemes to disclose their complete portfolios and also to follow a standardised classification of companies into sectors.
We believe that the inclusion of the aforementioned disclosure norms will go a long way in furthering the cause of investor empowerment.
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Ranjan Varma Personal Finance 2.01