Sahjik Finserv and Realty Blogs

  RBI's fictional letter to the Government - on inflation The Story Inflation in India is at a 5-month high. It hit 7.41% in September. It’s a problem for the RBI. Because the central bank has a mandate — to keep long-term inflation between 2–6%. It’s called ‘inflation-targeting’ and it’s a strategy etched into the RBI’s job description (JD!) since 2016. That means the RBI is failing. And anytime inflation breaches this band for 3 quarters, the RBI needs to explain what went wrong. They need to do the explaining to the government by the way and they also need to articulate how they intend to bring inflation back on track. And so far, they’ve not had to do any explaining. They’ve done a pretty decent job overall. But now, that record is in jeopardy. Inflation has consistently stayed above the 6% mark these past few months and they’ll have to draft that letter. Also, it’s quite historic since this will be the first time since 2016 that the RBI will have to do something of this sort. ...

123Pay by NPCI - Newsletter The RBI's vision is to offer accessible, affordable, safe, secure, reliable and efficient payment systems to all Indians. India has made massive strides in this direction, with NPCI driving robust products like UPI, NEFT, RTGS, IMPS and more to cater to the needs of retail and B2B segments.  Amongst the most successful is UPI, which revolutionized payments for the common man. Today, it accounts for almost 20% of all retail digital payments. UPI achieved this feat primarily due to the following factors: Affordable Smartphones and wide usage  Affordable internet and penetration pan India  Pandemic push for Digital transformation and rise of digital payments All round focus on Digital literacy However, this still leaves behind a segment of people who still find a smart phone beyond their reach. To address this audience, the NPCI has introduced 123Pay, which allows feature phone owners to access UPI without the ne...

  The Story You know Truecaller, of course. It helps you deal with spam calls — weeds out folks who sell you credit cards, insurance policies and trading accounts. And since India has the dubious distinction of being the spam capital of Asia, Truecaller has been a lifesaver. But not everybody is convinced that Truecaller is a benign enterprise trying to rid India of spam calls. Especially Viceroy Research. They’re a research company putting out reports on publicly traded companies. And their end objective is to find dodgy companies with suspect financials and make money off of betting against the stock. And their latest target is Truecaller. In a scathing  report  headlined ‘Truecaller’s True Colors’, they’ve taken down the company’s business model bit by bit. Now Truecaller isn’t listed in India. It’s actually listed on the Nasdaq Stockholm Exchange. But the company earns  over 70%  of its revenues from India and the report features Truecaller’s many indiscreti...

  The Story Credit Suisse is a famous investment bank headquartered in Switzerland. It’s been around since 1856 and it’s one of the biggest banks in the world. But many people believe that the bank may now be under considerable financial distress and they are predicting a total collapse of the entire global banking system. So the big question is — How did we get here and is there any merit to these allegations? Well, there are a few concerning developments. One, the company’s share price has been tanking rather precipitously. They fell around 10% in early trading just yesterday and the price has collapsed nearly 50% in the past 6 months. Next, there’s the issue with Credit Default Swaps. We won’t get into the technicalities here, but a bank like Credit Suisse has to borrow money to keep doing business. But lenders don’t always automatically assume that they’ll get paid in full. Instead, they may find ways of protecting themselves against an extraordinary default event, by...