Quantitative Easing and the Chaos in Global Markets.. lets make some sense out of it.

A recent furore in the international markets, made it unavoidable for me to dig deep down to know more about the Issues, Context and Solutions of Quantitative Easing. So here I present you a sojourn from Japan, Iceland, Europe and the inevitable US.

The global financial system already has seen a long and unsuccessful catastrophe in quantitative easing(QE) in Japan. The carry trade that sprang from Japan's financial bubble bursting event after 1990, BOJ's liquidity enabled the banks to lend yen credit to arbitrageurs at a low interest rate to buy higher-yielding securities. Iceland was paying 15 per cent. So the Japanese yen were converted into foreign currencies,which in turn pushed down its exchange rate.

Japan that refined the business of carry trade and is responsible for what it is today. After its financial and property bubble burst, BOJ empowered its banks to earn their way out of negative equity by supplying them with low-interest credit for them to lend out. Japan's recession shrunk the demand at home, so its banks developed something called as "the carry trade":a process of lending at a low interest rate to arbitrageurs at home and abroad, to lend to countries offering the highest returns. Yen were borrowed to convert into dollars, euros, Icelandic kroner and Chinese renminbi to buy government bonds, private-sector bonds, stocks, currency options and other financial instruments. This carry trade was capped by foreign arbitrage in bonds of high growth(read GDP)countries such as Iceland, who payed up to 15 per cent. This kind of funding was not used to finance formation of new capital or revenue generation. It was purely financial in character serving extractive, not productive purposes.

By the year 2006, after a self funded war on an already inflating budget deficit, the US and Europe started experiencing a Japanese dejavu financial and real estate bubble. After Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae pin-pricked the bubble in 2008, they did what Japanese banks had done after 1990. Seeking to help U.S. banks work their way out of negative equity, the Fed flooded the economy with credit. The idea was to provide banks with more liquidity, so that they would lend more to domestic borrowers. As was thought, the economy would engage itself in constructive investment and a new boom market would start. It was strongly believed the economy would borrow its way out of debt. But what happened was really dreadful, the extra sloshing money fuelled the speculative investments and re-inflated asset prices in real estate, stocks and bonds so as to stop home foreclosures and thus starting another series of optimistic loans from banks which ensured the total wipe out of all the collateral on bank balance sheets.

The same kind of Phenomenon is happening again,albeit on a much global scale, where the U.S. liquidity is spilling over to foreign economies, increasing their exchange rates. In a sense, instead of helping the global recovery, the "flood of liquidity" from the Fed and ECB is causing "chaos" in foreign exchange markets in the name of Quantitative Easing (QE).

The most recent debatable Quantitative Easing has been pinned on the echelons of hope and false optimism. It provides bank customers, not banks, with loanable funds. Central Banks supply commercial banks with liquidity in order to facilitate smooth functioning of interbank payments and customer and government transactions, but what banks lend is their own debt, not that of the central bank. The purpose of the funds will depend not only on the adequacy of the supply of fund, but evaluting if the environment is encouraging to real investment. QE subsidizes U.S. capital overdraft, and flushes money in a spillover effect to push non-dollar currency exchange rates. There is an amazing video which tells what is QE doing for America.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTUY16CkS-k.

The Team Bernanke's credit creation measures is not in any way increasing bank loans to real estate, consumers or businesses. The Banks are not lending, at least in the US. They are collecting on the past defaulted loans. This is why the U.S. savings rate is suddenly spiking. We could compare this phenomenon in the same way as hoarding diverts revenue away from being spent on goods and services, thus debt repayment shrinks the disposable income which can be spent.

So The Ben Bernanke(Fed) created $2 trillion in new Federal Reserve credit last year, and again another $1 trillion over the coming year. This is what has led gold prices to surge and investors to move out of weakening paper currencies, since September 2010. On the contrary, it is surprising to note that banks are not lending to an economy which is in need of liquidity and is being shrunk by debt deflation. The quantitative easing has been sent abroad with an purpose to gain from maximum returns. It is been pushed to the BRIC countries: Brazil, Russia, India and China. The frenetic borrowing from U.S., Japanese and British banks to buy bonds, stocks and currencies in the BRIC and Third World countries is on a self-feeding expansion. Speculative inflows into these countries are pushing up their currencies as well as inflating their asset prices.

Now lets see what it is doing for THE REST OF THE WORLD.

Central Banks are trying and insulating their economies, in a way immunizing or delineating itself from the Volatile Dollar. This measure has now come been criticized by the US. Japan is trying to hold down its exchange rate by selling yen and buying U.S. Treasury bonds. China has tried ways to recycle its trade surplus, by buying out U.S. companies. The US, on he other hand, did not let CNOOC buy into U.S. oil refinery capacity a few years ago and is now urging the Canadian government to block China's attempt to purchase its potash resources. This leaves little option for China and other countries but to hold their currencies stable by purchasing U.S. and European government bonds. Brazil has been more a victim than a beneficiary of capital inflow. The inflow of foreign money has pushed up the Brazilian Real by 6 per cent in just three months. This has eroded the competitiveness of Brazilian exports. Thailand's is considering taxes and currency trade restrictions like one on the purchases of foreign bonds in wake to stop the rising Baht. The RBI's steps are very shaky on acting against the threat of inward capital flows, albeit their government inclinations towards would diplomacy seems to be more than its people.

Such inflows cannot be trusted as they are very volatile and short term parkings. They can never be considered as tangible investment. These funds cause currency fluctuations and disrupts trade patterns as they create and serve the purpose of Short term Speculators. It is also a shame that Speculators also encompass large financial institutions and their customers. Most of the academic and policy-making discussions about the exchange rate treat the balance of payments and exchange rates as determined purely by commodity trade and purchasing power parity. The reality speaks a different tale where the foreign financial flows and military spending that actually have generally been seen dominating greater portion of the balance of payments.

This capital outflow from the U.S. has indeed helped the US banks rebuild their balance sheets, as the Fed wamted to. In the process, the international financial system has been plagued by more damages than it has rescued America.

Will Securitization Industry reforms bring a good news this time...Halloween's round the corner..Lets hope for the best.

Okay now lets try and analyse and see what things we can draw from the recent measures being taken worldwide in the arena of the most hush-hushed topic today - Securitization. This would get seriously financial so non-financial guys can give it a skip.
Lets imagine this. Can the U.S.and its financial institutions create tens of trillions dollars from their virtual financial system in order to buy up bonds, derivatives and stocks around the world, all the inexhaustible assets like land for sale in the assumption of making capital gains and in the process making a margin out of the arbitrage spreads by debt leveraging at interest cost which might be say less than 1%. Seems possible or similar...
This is the game which was played in 2008, resulting in Recession.

When the US received critical blame for the debacle, it decided to stop this but it was too lucrative an opportunity for the US not to use it especially when it was under such a deficit crises so it planned an complete overhaul of the Securitization industry, this time it would mandate the lenders to be responsible for a part of the credit risk of loans which would ultimately be sold to the investors. It wants to put an end to the "gain-on-sale accounting" rules, that helped spur the market’s fake boom. This is being done to restore confidence in asset-backed markets and allow US banks to resume pumping more credit to the economy, albeit doing away with the creating of non-systemic risks.

Securitization of mortgages and credit card loans, which were termed as assets, accounted for about half of the credit markets before the financial crisis struck.
Now the originators will be required to retain at least 5% of the credit risk of loans,which would be packaged into the rated (A,A+,B,B+,B++) securities and sold to retail investors. The 5% rule (is to be tested in Europe) would ensure that lenders have their own stakes in the deal, the move makes the lenders attached with the default of the bargain.
This measure of doing away with the “gain on sale accounting” would prevent financial companies from booking paper profits on loans, when the retail investor buys into the packaged into securities.
The 2008 recession story was penned because Securitization had made adulterated credit more widely available. It had breaken the link between borrower and lender, now this measure will be different, whenever the first seller is barred from authentication of genuineness, the product leads to a general erosion of standards, in this case lending standards, resulting in a serious market failure that fuelled the housing boom and ravined the housing bust”.

We've spoken quite often of the unrelatedness between those who bear the risk and those who move the product in the financial world.So let me explain you how bankers, industrialists, political lobbyists helping with huge funds for political campaign played the game of bloodbath soaked in the green economy.

A local institution (remember these are generally private companies)(XYZ) gave a mortgage to the owner, a NINJA person with a strong defaulting history. Even before the house went up for foreclosure, the mortage has been used by small and big fishes alike to create a bubble... the local XYZ has sold the mortgaged papers to a regional bank, which has in turn packaged it in groups of A B C class bundled categories and sold to thousands of people, dishing out a perfect piece meal of the biggest fraud in the streets. To tell a complex story in short, XYZ made its money from the borrowers monthly payments, and the regional one, from the commission and fees of the volume of business it has generated.

The financial industry barfs up a financial crisis about every five to ten years. Remember the South American bonds, Long Term Capital Management, S&L crisis, Russian bonds, and the recent subprime, etc mess. It needs strong regulations since they can't compute risk, that's talking in a sterile world and instead we have to deal with the real world of political connections and protectionism by those who provide the biggest campaign donations. So the new set of solutions need to work within the framework that financial oligarchs will never feel the full pain so we need to protect ourselves from them. Lets hope against the hope that the vulturous bankers would handle our future well this time, with the industry tom-toming about the latest reforms .

Peepli Live - An untold story ... A reality check of societal development.

Peepli Live ... I could not just escape it. You must be thinking me as absurd on a movie review post. Yeah, the hype around me for the film was too much to have evaded, so i too sat with a popcorn.

Its how amazingly a story so simple and non condesending has been used to portray so much...
The real story is not of Mr. Natha but of Hori Mahtoo, the earth digger, who died in his own dugged grave ...
The real story is of the mis-understanding of media, the foolishness of the ilk of Miss Nandita Malik.
The real story is the shame which espionage brings to the profession of journalism.
The real story is of people involved in the political and social system and the kind of accountability they have.

Each of these have such a gaping social angle to it. But lets pick up something more pertinent.The real story is the stark divergence and the story of how farmers are becoming labourers.
A very sensitive issue governing Developmental Economics.

A new generation among the farming community in India is not interested in taking up agriculture as a profession as it is increasingly getting less profitable. Agriculture’s share in the country’s GDP shrunk to 17.5% last year from nearly 30% in the early 1990s.

This thoughts echoes in unison with a growing and worrisome trend in the nation's agriculture sector: Indian farms are failing to attract capital or talent or the 21,000 students who graduate from India's 50 agricultural and veterinary universities. Majority of the farm graduates vie for jobs in the government, or financial institutions, or in private sector industry. They are seldom taking to farming as a profession.And Why should they..? What is the kind of money that is there for them...?

A survey showed 40% of Indian farmers would quit farming, if they had a choice – an alarming revelation for a country where two-thirds of the billion-plus people live in villages. India's farm sector has changed remarkably little since the advent of the Green Revolution, while other industries have been transformed over the past two decades. We have to start realising that farming is becoming an increasingly less profitable profession. There was a time when farmers had very little choice. Things have changed. Farmers would like to make a shift. This has raised concerns that India's farm output could lag demand and the country – which ranks among the world's top three consumers of rice, wheat, sugar, tea, coarse grains and cotton – will become a large food importer unless yields jump. The increase in yields in the past decades have been insignificant.

But the next revolution faces a tougher challenge – in part because of the environmental damage done by the previous one. Back then, abundant groundwater was available and the soil was not degraded by pesticides and fertilisers, which initially helped boost productivity.
With 60% of Indian farms depending on erratic rains, it took just one failed monsoon to force India to import 5 million tonnes of sugar in 2008-09, after exporting a similar quantity a year earlier. The drought, after the worst monsoon rains in 37 years, is also expected to slash rice output by 17%, encouraging India to begin importing rice, after being a leading exporter of the commodity for decades.

Climate change(aka Urbanisation) is having devastating impact on growth and productivity of several crops, particularly the food grain crops, Agriculture in India had always been a toss of heads and tails with monsoon playing such an crucial part. Millions of poor farmers don't have the resources to cope with the uncertainty of monsoons.

If you want to make farming more profitable, the price for farm products needs to be more remunerative. Will the middle class accept this?

The government have to allow genetically modified crops in order to improve farm revenue, and more so to counter the limitations on the supply side. Productivity improvement is the crux of the issue. That is why we need to have an understanding of GM foods. However, without taking any stand n this issue, We should be alarmed by the mammoth number of seasonal farmers becoming full time urban labourers, propelling India's infrastructure growth story.

A lot of the farmers have become wage labourers in the urban cities where their day earnings are 90-250 depending on the city and the kind of money slosh around. Today you find labourers, plumbers and welders, are all moving from a city like Kolkata to Kerala... and from Kerala to Gulf ...

8 million farmers have quit job in the census of 1991-2001. That is 10 years way back, would be waiting for the recent census to startle India and its intellectuals. Its time India realised it has looked into the Jai Jawan, (you are payng them well with one Pay commssions after another) but the Jai Kisan, is about to loose its identity... What would be our identity 20 years from now ... An pathetic America in the making ??? A question which should be answered fast and addressed soon.

Kudos to Anusha Rizvi... Mam you have just earned a fan... Its time academic institutions started adressing these issues with more seriousness than making case studies on films ... and awarding doctorates to Mr. Amitabh Bachchans, Shilpa Shettys and Akshay Kumars..

Valuation of Intellectual Property

Intellectual Property as the name suggests refers to creations of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce.

Now from a finance guy .. what kind of artistic and literary things can be expected... you are being too quick to judge ...

The scope of this asset( OMG, i beg your pardon... yes, an asset) usage and its manifold benefits are pushing the envelope further in the Asset Valuation Industry. Till lately, considered as an asset of undetermined value, it has suddenly gone to become one of important sources of Fund Raisimg and Valuation.
A key driver in consideration of :-
(1) Mergers & Acquisitions.
(2) Licensing & Assignment.
(3)Investment
(4)Enforcement
(5)Portfolio Investent & Management.

The scope encompassing this industry has been expanding bringing under its wake,right from bringing finance professionals from different walks to sourcing legal expertise in different capacities. The size of this industry going forward is estimated to be in hundreds of billion dollars.
The crux of the industry was formed, when people answered the question of
"Why to Value IP?."
To take a leaf from Prof. Drucker, "The value of the Invisible is more than the Visible."Enumerated below are the valuation methods we follow:

The cost method of valuating IP basically focusses on two of the criterias, Replacement Method and Reproduction Method.This valuation model either calculates value in terms of replacement or reproduction cost of the IP.The most important aspect in this method is that the valuation here is done at current and not at historic cost.For eg. A Pharma company which has been developing a molecule for the last 10 years would consider the cost incurred on the current date and not on the basis of last 10 years cost of inputs.
This method is used usually to value an asset at an early stage of development.

The next method is Market Value Approach method.This valuation is done by ascertaining the exchange value of an similar asset in the same industry.However, the difficulty of obtaining the transactional data poses a major challenge infron of the valuer.
Moreover, every asset of intangibe nature is unique and so does the valuation.This method is more prevalent in companies where there are a lot of substitutes available in the market, since the comparisons should be an "apples to apples comparison" and the industry per se has to be transperant in sharing its transactional data.

The next method in this industry is the Income Approach to Valuation. This considers the future income which can accrue from the asset in future.
It calculates (projections) the future earnings capacity of the IP(Intelletual Property), and its estimated years of life as per the patent filing.

The other method is one of the most prevalent and most talked about method in the valuation space, Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) method.

The other methods are :-
(1) Venture Capital Method, whose templates of valuation are very wide ranging and varied from the perspective of different Venture Capitalists.
(2) Relief from Royalty Method.
(3) Monte Carlo Simulation Method.
(4) Option Pricing Model Method.

The Intellectual Property derives its value in terms of :
(1)Accounting Value.
(2)Economic Value.
(3)Technical Value.

The IP Valuation Industry opens up a huge scope in another unexplore vertical, Securitization, which is presently ... crores. An Industry waiting to explode as far as emerging markets like India are concerned...

My Understanding of 'Shining Dawn', called Gold.

With the ever watchful eyes , I have been following the yellow currency and its history from a long time...Right from the days of checking gold prices through SMS alerts during my classes to the days of waiting impatiently for Gold Reserves Value Data of every country... and then rushing back to my blackboard to analyze how would it behave...

Gold as in likewise with all trade-able assets, are more dependent on what your neighbour does rather then what it should do...

Consumer Prices and Gold have a been showing an amazing correlation off late... The international currency standard status has bestowed some properties other than the chemical ones on the yellow money. Or has it, really ?

In 2000, there was a crash in dot.coms. The whole magic of the tech bubble suddenly disappeared. And guess what? Gold went up.
In 2001, the War on Terror(or some say it was a pseudo war created to boost an dwindling economy, flourishing on debt[lets keep this for another time]) began. And guess what? Gold went up again.
And again in 2002. And 2003. And 2004.
By 2005, the world economy was in the throes of a massive financial bubble. Everything was going up. Gold went up too.
In 2006, the US had a major housing bubble on its hands. Gold went up.
In 2007, the housing bubble started to lose air. Gold went up.
In 2008, Wall Street stared into the abyss. Lehman Bros. went broke. The feds took over housing finance, auto-making, insurance, commercial lending...and gold went up.
In 2009, the feds went all out to try to engineer a recovery. The Fed ballooned its balance sheet by $1.2 trillion. The federal budget went into deficit by nearly one and a half trillion. Still, gold went up.

And what's this? The recession officially ended more than a year ago. Housing and unemployment are still limping. De-leveraging is still underway (David Rosenberg calls it a "depression")...and go figure. Gold is still going up.

Gold goes up with consumer prices. That's the most common notion... however if we stretch the periodicity chart on 5 year horizon. We find for nearly two decades - from 1980 to 1999 - gold went down while consumer and asset prices rose.

Now, consumer prices are stable. Yet gold hits new records.

All views on gold are with an exception.They say Gold has its own wacky behaviour. There's no line of thought on the subject that doesn't have a curve in it. Today, some bulls are loading up on gold because they see a recovery coming. Others are buying it because they don't. Recovery, they believe, will boost consumer appetites, resulting in higher inflation levels and a higher price for gold. The absence of recovery, say others, will cause the Fed to undertake more money printing.

Those who are supposed to sit on the fences are among the most aggressive buyers. Gold for them is a " safe haven bet " proposition. If the economy improves, gold rises naturally. If it doesn't improve, the Fed actions will force it up.

And if you come to believe that US days in financial supremacy are numbered, then the Chinese will take over. Gold makes up only 1.7% of China's foreign exchange reserves. China is supposed to be targeting a 10% figure. If so, then it would have to buy every ounce the world produces for two and a half years or more. Now given the kind of skewed relations it is building up, relying on its own production , (China is the world's largest producer) it would take nearly 20 years of steady accumulation to reach the 10% level.

The metal sitting pretty on the 79th place in the periodic table has many uses for the common humans. People make spoons, forks and bathroom faucets out of it. It's occasionally used as roofing, or even as a murder weapon;(history) a king had molten gold poured down his throat after being captured by his enemies. And Lenin said he would line the public latrines with it. But the best use ever found for it was as money - as a reliable measure of wealth.

My grandparents are on another set of people who do not let me forget the sway Gold has in our lives. They can't stop talking about how cheap they had brought gold at the time of their marriage and how undervalued it was even in the time of my parents marriage. But unaware of one amazing fact, The inflation meter sppeaks otherwise. The price of gold will have to almost double from today's level to reach its inflation-adjusted high of 1980.

But this is what makes gold very different from other money. Mr. Robert Mugabe should know, that, the trick is not in holding a trillion dollar note from Zimbabwe, he can hold onto that paper until hell freezes; its value will never return. Gold, on the other hand, will never go away.

Over the centuries, mankind has often experimented with alternatives to gold. Driven by larceny or desperation, base metal and paper were tried on many occasions. Paper was particularly promising. You could put as many zeros on a piece of paper as you wanted, creating an infinite supply of "money". People realized that money gotten at no expense was only gotten rid of at great cost. Given the ability to create "money" at will, a central banker will sooner or later create too much.

But one generation learns. The next forgets.

But Gold Stays on .... I trick which i have learnt is never trust Gold ... but at times of desperation... this metal can be of great value...

Market Labour Reforms and implications on Labour Development

Brooding over with a discussion with my friend Tuhin, on labour markets reforms and its deregulation status in PSU sectors in India, an thought stuck me as how to identify the labour and product market institutions affecting the labour market performance of a country.

In this context, factors such as the employment protection legislation, unemployment benefits and entry barriers for firms have been considered. Theory has generally predicted a clear impact of institutions on labour market performance. Empirical evidence from studies around are yet to conform the predictions of the theory(if any of my readers know any papers which prove it otherwise,please post the link). The findings fail both to distinguish the crucial from the less important institutions but also to determine whether deregulation lowers or raises unemployment ,while the inconclusive results can be partially explained by differences in the time period or the country selection, model mis-specification and the policy making body bias on such issues also seems to be an important source of error.

Institutional variables which I am taking the liberty to divide into five groups (what we as Indians understand):
Tax system (progressive.. but can and should be more simflified),
Employment Protection legislation (Not any research done to study the implementation and penetration of such legislation's in MSME sector),
Workers' bargaining power (we have come a long way... At least now we can lure our farmers to cities for boosting Infrastructure),
Product market regulation (Still a fiefdom of big names and business groups..) and
Unemployment compensation (oops... this is not applicable in India..oh !! NREGS..oh yeah, another way to fill pockets from coffers).

"Enough of you being cynical, Avinash"... if you are a staunch believer in the Indian Reform System.

Taxes on labour seem to affect the unemployment rate mainly by increasing the cost of labour and, thus, lowering labour demand.

Furthermore, the effect of a labour tax increase depends crucially on the degree of the workers' bargaining power. The stronger the workers, the more of the tax increase the firms have to bear. Hence, higher labour taxes only affect labour demand, if the workers' bargaining power is high(eg. Labour conditions in Bengal and Kerela). An important point is the utilization of the tax income by the government. If part of the taxes serve as funding for, say, qualification measures for unemployed workers to reduce the spell of unemployment, taxes can indirectly help to reduce unemployment, but this point is highly debatable in terms of Indian context.

Let me talk about something whose implementation is supposed to be improbable possibility "Employment Wages" or something which we will call as 'Employment Protection fund'. The replacement rate can be split up into the benefit payments for different states of unemployment, say, first year of unemployment or fifth year of unemployment. The bargaining system can be displayed by, for instance, both the union coverage and the bargaining co-ordination.

Providing employment protection in globally advanced countries is usually conducted by imposing severance payments on the firm or to exacerbate layoffs by legal regulations. Concerning unemployment, the effect of higher employment protection is assumed to be twofold. On the one hand, it lowers the flows from employment to unemployment since firms take the additional costs for layoffs in consideration when evaluating the productivity of a worker. Labour is allocated less efficiently what comes along with a fall in productivity and, finally, decreased labour demand. While the employment protection can be seen as an insurance against getting unemployed, the unemployment benefit system affects predominantly those who are already out of work. An increase of unemployment benefits on the one hand causes unemployed persons who are eligible to benefit payments to raise their reservation wage. On the other hand, unemployed who are not eligible to benefits will have a higher incentive to accept a job in order to get qualified for the benefit payments in case of future unemployment.

Furthermore, the fear of losing job-specific human capital can convince the workers to attach no importance to high unemployment benefits. In this case, unemployment benefits will not lower the unemployed workers' incentive to search a job.

The degree of product market regulation affects labor demand through adjusting the competitive environment in a market. Increasing competition in a market means more competition for labor if entry barriers are sufficiently low. Hence, the lower the governmental regulative intervention (e.g. barriers to entry or public ownership) the lower the unemployment rate.

Nevertheless, a certain degree of barriers to entry can also help to increase the firms' productivity in a market. This, in turn, can lead to an increasing demand for labor. Furthermore, a change from public to private ownership boosts the performance of workers and managers since monitoring is much easier to implement.

I think i am getting too carried away .. for more insight refer to my Labour Market Reform report .... C ya till the next update.

A Branding Joke ... played on the Disparate Indian Consumer.

Brands in Disparate India.

The marketer always tries to push the envelope always by adding a dimension to its scope of work. Invariably, doing it either by increasing the scope by volume or by upping its qualitative deliverables.

One of the biggest failures for him has always been in the area of brand building, specifically loyal customers. This happens in the Indian market, not because of the non-accessibility of the product but the range of disparate consumer,which it has to cater to.

The need for the Indian Marketer to be a visionary is not the need for the time, but the need of the evolution and sustainibility.The Indian Marketer has always failed to look beyond the Short term Vision, because of the pressure of deliverables in the Indian Market.His escape lines are something like this,” At the end of the day, I have to report numbers”.

Lets accept this fact.
We are a number driven country, intent only on performance and immediate ones. We don’t leave scope for Experimenters and the ‘also-rans’. We are an impatient lot because of the sheer competition and peer pressure of people waiting for one chance to perform. In India, do not leave scope for mistakes and thus are nipping creativity and growth in its bud, in the fear of conformity and certainty.

Oh !! Come on.If you are shaking that head in disagreement, Let me prove it.

Lets start with the best example you can imagine of.
The best consumer build up, reach, brand retention and brand building ad exercises have been made by the Telecom Industry. You name it and you would be in unison with me.

AIRTEL..Express yourself.. Building Relationships.. the list for these guys is endless..

VODAFONE.. the pug and then the zoo zoo .. they took the world by storm.

IDEA .. what an idea, sirjee!! ranging from a range of common social issues and giving smart ideas to solve them..

Amazing isn’t it . Success . The Telecom Sector wouldn't trade it for anything else to Redefine it better. Best distribution networks... Keeping all variable of marketing challenges in peak.

Ok , hold it right here. Now lets go back to basics.

BRAND
Brand is seen as a implied promise,the level of quality which people(consumers) have come to expect from a brand which will continue with repeated future purchases of the same product. Xerox.. Nirma in the 90's.. Parle G Glucose Biscuits.. Lifebuoy.. Given the options and competition, the consumer always goes for the product. This is the criteria for a LOYAL CUSTOMER BASE . It sums up the crux of our whole branding exercises in the Management corridors.

Is the Telecom Industry conforming with this pattern of product positioning with its portfolio.

I would say ,"This is not the case with telecom."

Though they have been excellent in selling and catering to customer base as wide as selling Blackberries to Rs. 5 Recharge Vouchers, but the they have failed miserably in creating a repeated purchaser.

The amount of churning happening in the telecom industry, doesn’t subscribe to the basics being right here. This flaw is making the telecom companies not allow the clause of number portability enter in India. Brand Confidence for this industry is so less and that these companies are still following a poach and acquisition customer strategy.

Indians with their inherent nature will never pay for what they haven’t still used , but still a statistics which goes to do so much contrary to the basic mindset of the folk. Just imagine, we still are in the phrase of such an evolution and growth, but we still see subscriptions in Postpaid area to be mere 20% and the Prepaid sector still a staggering 80%.
WHAT KIND OF BRAND ACCEPTANCE IS THIS ?

A sector which has been adding 20 million customers on a monthly basis, give or take plus or minus 1%, Imagine them adding this base with suppose 2% churning and yet we can only boast of a tele-density of 58% and the base of 650 million subscribers. Improbability can’t be more believed.

Now would you still say Telecom is the best branded sector.. .. The story has more dimensions to be revealed … for more insights look for my Telecom Sectoral Report.

One credit which I don’t want to take away from the Telecom Sector is the way it has branded itself.. Lets save the next story for the next update.