Bollywood Bonanza

Actual Answers by Callers:
Konkona Sen - Ranbir Kapoor
Diya Mirza - Imran Khan

Vidya Balan - Bobby Deol
Sushmita Sen - Upen Patel
Rimi Sen - John Ibrahim
Madhuri Dixit - Sunil Shetty
Katrina Kaif - Akshay Kumar
Aishwarya Rai - Tushar Kapoor
Vivek Oberoi - Manisha Koirala
Deepika Padukone - Ashmit Patel
Sonam Kapoor - Aftab Shivdasani
Esha Deol - Harman Bhaveja
Vidya Balan - Sunny Deol
Sunidhi Chauhan - Karan Johar
Sonakshi Sinha - Salman Khan
Rani Mukherjee - Salman Khan
Sonam Kapoor - Salman Khan
Shilpa Shetty - Salman Khan
Lara Dutta - Salman Khan
Kareena Kapoor - Salman Khan
Bipasa Basu - Salman Khan
Asin - Salman Khan
Juhi Chawla - Salman Khan
Anushka Sharma - Salman Khan
Neha Dhupia - Salman Khan
Karisma Kapoor - Salman Khan
(At this point a hint was given that the gal's name started with the letter "P", and after this hint, last 4 calls were to be taken...)
Priyanka Chopra - Salman Khan
Prachi Desai - Salman Khan
Pooja Bhat - Salman Khan
Preity Zinta - Salman Khan

Can it get crazier? Can I sue Zoom (or whoever makes this stuff) for fraud?

Have you ever tried calling them up to play? I did once, but only ended up wasting a lot of money without even getting connected. Ya, I was stupid. Is there anyone else like me? And someone who got connected by any chance?

CAAAR!

It's foolish to own and use a long so called CAAAR in India. Nissan Sunny is simply not for us. Our roads don't have turning radii that suit a Nano, let alone a CAAAR. And our roads don't have exits, so when a car wants to take a sharp lane out, it ends up causing a traffic jam. And where the hell will you park the CAAAR? Forget all that, I even sometimes feel that having a car, a normal one, for use on Indian city roads is itself a bad idea - it requires extremely careful driving, has to be driven extremely slow, and parking is a big problem. But interestingly, a lot of people in India do buy cars, coz the metallic chariot that runs on oil is still a status symbol here. And besides, there is indeed the necessity, when a few people have to travel together, however bad the roads might be, coz the public transport is sometimes even more horrible. And high smoke and pollution levels often make you want to travel indoors, and you don't mind investing that extra time, coz of the extra space you occupy in the traffic, and extra money you've to spend on fuel. And many still hope, although against much hope, that this state of infrastructure will turn around and they will have the roads where they'll be able to unleash the power of their powerful cars.

I still remember the surprised look on the face of guys at an exam center in US when I told them I did not have a car, and needed a place where I could keep my bag (the way we keep them in front in exam halls during exams in India!). Yes, there are very few in the US who write CFA exam and yet don't have a car.

Just another parallel thought which sprang from this - most guys in US start their companies in garages. It's understandable, coz it's decent space, totally not necessary, without rent to be paid, and huge office space for a start-up. In India we keep cars under our buildings, or in open air and covered at times with plastic. To make a sweeping conclusion, it's easy to start companies in spacious countries like America, where the basic physical infrastructure is virtually everywhere.

I'm cold, but...

It's getting less and less cold now, with each passing day. I love winters, especially very cold ones. The two winters I lived in Lucknow were my coldest and the most memorable and pleasant. The cold in Bilaspur is nowhere close to the spooky foggy chill of north India, of which I got great experience in Lucknow. Of course, if you go further north, you have snow and ice and sub-zero temperatures, which I experienced only for a couple of days when I went to Sikkim. But cold feels awesome only as long as it does not start freezing stuff around...

Snow and Ice reminds of the thing going on at Davos right now - The World Economic Forum. I wish I could be there. The thought of so many intellectuals and crooks at the same place talking stuff that shape the world definitely gives an intellectual erection to anyone suffering from paralysis of analysis, like I do. But the way I am going about my career, I don't see that possible in my whole life-time. I know that at the core of nature, there are stuff called quantum leaps, but they might just be the operating procedures of god to execute this world. Not that steep rises at macro level are rare - we have people turning billionaires in USDs within short time-spans - but I am deeply pessimistic at this point of time. Although I often feel these are not quite normal in humans (but important to note that one's concept of normality is only relative assuming himself/herself as normal), I wish I had a single strong passion to drive me in some direction, a single strong goal and motivation to pursue it or a single strong pain I would have fought with all my energies.

Religious Intolerance & Conflicts

Just like some people cannot live without praying to the god they believe in, some people cannot live without talking shit about others' gods. And for atheists, criticism of the concept of god and of specific gods is the biggest source of strength for their belief in non-belief. Sometimes, I find it totally illogical that we humans should respect each other's choice of religion and gods (and being sensible and logical species, humans indeed have this difficulty in accepting religions, gods and such faiths not our own), coz anyone would agree that the actual god or creator must be the same for all humans - basically for the following resons: (1) No religion speaks of co-existence of other religions or of different gods creating and ruling different sections of humanity, (2) All existing religions are fairly recent, i.e., only a few millenia old, whereas human beings have been hanging around for lacs of years, and other creatures for hundreds of millions of years, (and therefore, I am afraid, the first point I made becomes redundant), and (3) History of human evolution indicates common geographical and ancestral origins. Therefore, it is hard to imagine many gods independently working on different non-overlapping sections of human beings.

Furthermore humans evolved from apes, to whom human gods with human characteristics kind of funda cannot apply coz apes were there even before humans existed. Although this argument cannot stand in front of the counter-argument that evolution is false theory, same god created everyone, that same god is human-like, coz humans are some ultimate species meant to rule this planet and represent god's loved ones and all that shit. You cannot argue with logic to counter things said as facts with disclaimers that those facts need no proof. Although, I agree that logic too fails after a point coz of human ignorance, but it evolves with time and does not refuse to change its shape in light of new learnings and evidence. For example, all arguments of religious folks to support their beliefs are based on what someone said 1000-2000 years back or what someone wrote in some book such long time ago. Whereas, all arguments of atheists, who generally argue in light of evidence, are based on recent discoveries, learnings and knowledge - like the theory of evolution or quantum physics.

What about animals? I am sure each of our human-like gods created all of them too, according to respective ancient scriptures. If however there is some possibility that there is a bunch of gods, perhaps playing video game or something using us, each creating stuff living and non-living... What can I say? The thought itself is too human, in the present sense of what 'human' means. May be gods behave differently. May be only gods are qualified enough to talk about gods. Some humans have also spoken about them. Can't tell now whether they were just schizophrenic and told stories out of illusions or they were results of some bug in the video game software that resulted in some guys knowing stuff of the gods. The latter is also a possibility, besides the former, coz of late, we've had fewer such genuine enlightened guys, possibly coz the bug is fixed now!

Whatever be the case, the point is, that religious tolerance just does not come naturally to humans, although religion probably does. We'll always have people fighting over gods. Unless by some iron fist, we can achieve a gradual convergence of all religions to one concept of the almighty creator, which we all agree upon, with the best of human understanding and knowledge. Unfortunately, this is never going to happen, unless the world is flushed of its shit a couple of times (which I heard is going to happen once in 2012), coz none of the religions has a sunset clause and coz powerful humans use the human propensity for religion and the existence of different religions, to play politics and derive more power, so as to rule other humans.

If humans are part of nature and nature is perfect in the way it evolves, then all that is happening must definitely lead to something good. Of course, we don't know if nature really evolves in ways that are best... and best for whom?

Sad state of Indian Manufacturing Sector

Just got up and found this headline on the economictimes website that Indian factories fail to move up competition ladder. Sad, but we are consistently driving ourselves further in the same direction.

Most of our engineers get into IT, coz they get paid better there, have better working conditions and get a better raise in money each year, although the quality of work is quite the opposite at times. Strangely, these Software companies are categorized as Tecnology Stocks in our share markets, while Manufacturing is a separate sector - as if all the technology lies there in what you do with computers, while it is not even true as far as most of the Software work we do in India is concerned, which is mostly cleaning up or updating or maintaining stuff created by Americans.

Having said that, it is not the engineers that determine the area of focus in a particular section of an economy. The Manufacturing sector is probably not able to reach the critical mass where it can push for further investments and aggressiveness to achieve higher scales. It is either just sustaining itself or shrinking each day in a milieu that is a total turn-off. While the milieu and mindsets are changing and will further change once we have better incentives, job opportunities and quality outputs to prove the viability of the sector, the fundamental driver even for that lies elsewhere.

I believe we basically need strong policy action by the government, to push the Manufacturing sector, which will not happen as long as we go on taking too much pride in our IT sector and ignore the other areas which are important if we want to be fundamentally strong in the long term. A strong policy action, and encouragement through perks and incentives is enough to drive our systems and businessmen towards creating the right ingredients to generate resources for growing the sector. Resources, like people with right set of skills and adequate technical knowledge, are immensely scarce. But so were C and Java resources once upon a time. The funny thing is that our mechanical, civil, electrical, electronics, chemical, metallurgical, mining engineers, and others whom I missed, all somehow learn C/C++/Java or some other such thing in weeks, and become professional software engineers for life, while the stuff they learn for 4 years of engineering study, is just to get them degrees, and what they learn during those 4 years hardly matters to them or anyone. Then where's the incentive to improve the education standards of our engineering colleges?

I had this feeling often when I was a software engineer, that if I had done the same job when I was in my 10th standard, I would have done it 10 times better and more efficiently. Afterall, the skills you require for being one, are not beyond 10th grade. And the maturity you require for such jobs, is also not beyond 10th grade. But I had no other option, coz that was the best job I could find.

Of course, the world will always be imperfect, coz we don't have a deadline to make it perfect. Our movement forward or backward in any area seems to be the sum of human push and shove (which, I realized just now, is a vector!). Government action, therefore, has to be driven by push from the Industry, and vice versa. We have to get it right somehow :-)

Meaningless Existence?

One question arose in my mind today (although not the first time) and it span my head round and round. What's the meaning of my existence in this whole seemingly infinite universe crawling in this ever ticking thing called called 'time', with an incomprehensible monodirectional infinitude and bidirectional geometry. It may all be an illusion, but there are dimensions or elements to our own domain of illusions which uncover themselves as we figure them out. Or, perhaps our scientific progress is just our marginal propensity to illude (if there is such a word), like they say about a lot of other stuff in economics.

I don't know what to do. If I choose to believe that we are all living in some illusion, then I'll have to fight the uneasiness of not knowing the reality. This belief, however, has the nature of non-belief in things being real as they are, and therefore does not crave for evidence so as to exist. If I choose to believe that all this is real, I'll have to fight the uneasiness of believing something without any evidence. In any case, I am unable to make choices of belief or non-belief. It simply does not happen with me. I either know, or I don't know. But when I don't know, and I know or feel that I can't know, it sucks. What should I do?

How we did assignments at IIML :-)

Chat with Sai Harish on 24th March 2009

Being posted unedited with his consent...

8:35 PM me: anna, how to find WACC

6 minutes

8:42 PM Sai: narendra..

  edaina sare..

17 minutes

9:00 PM me: edaina sare ante?

  arrive at a figure somehow?

32 minutes

9:33 PM me: there?

16 minutes

9:49 PM Sai: edaina sare ante

9:50 PM e doubt aina contact narendra

 me: he is not online...

  i figured out something

  listen

  what r u doing in the CAPM analysis?

9:51 PM Sai: I will try to find out Beta for India cements

  and compare it with betas of those competing companies

 me: but beta values are available na

  how will u find?

 Sai: where?

 me: capitaline

 Sai: capitaline lo Beta undaa

 me: yes

 Sai: Jayant said, it has to be calculated

9:52 PM me: it is there...

 Sai: by fittin regression line over the last 24 months

  oh cool..

  capitaline lo india cements ledu kada

 me: don't know... i saw it for ACC

9:53 PM Sai: is it..

 me: may be u can find out using regression or whatever and then compare with values from capitaline

 Sai: ok

 me: 0.6575

  that's for ACC

 Sai: I will also consult jayant..

  :)

  full fast kada

 me: hehe

9:54 PM but WACC includes CAPM thing

  i am doing WACC...

  ok do one thing, i will use the beta that comes from your analysis

  is that fine?

 Sai: okay

9:55 PM till then... if you are using excel

  put some dummy values

 me: yes

 Sai: and proceed..

  or else your time will be lost

 me: i am using some values for corporate tax rate and risk-free rate

9:56 PM Sai: okay..

  is that not available in income tax website?

  risk free rate ante govt. bonds coupon value ee kada

 me: wow, good idea

  will see

  what's the URL?

 Sai: :(

5 minutes

10:02 PM me: :)

  will see

 Sai: okay

30 minutes

10:33 PM Sai: Shree cements is out of our list

  right

  ?

 me: no confirmation from narendra

  let's consider it out, we have too many companies

10:34 PM am using data from capitaline, as far as possible

 Sai: okay

14 minutes

10:48 PM Sai: where is beta given in capitaline

  under which section?

10:49 PM me: Share Price

  there is a link called beta Analysis

 Sai: yes got it

  thank you

 me: can i assume this is unlevered?

  welcome

10:50 PM and lever it first and then apply barra equation and do the adjustment?

10:51 PM Sai: bouncer!

  NSE ke chestunnam kada

  manam

 me: NSE?

10:52 PM never thought that... ACC beta value is given for BSE

 Sai: I mean Beta and stuff related to NSE nifty

  there is option to select NSE

  I will take thosee and send them across

  all betas..

10:54 PM me: ok fine...

8 minutes

11:02 PM me: Ambuja Cements India Ltd
Ambuja Cements Ltd

  there are two

  i am taking the latter

11:03 PM Sai: okay

 me: okati cheppu raa

 Sai: gujarat ambuja kaada

 me: expected market return elaa telustundi?

 Sai: !!

  so many bouncers in a single day!!

  manaki FM lo intha undaa

11:04 PM me: gujrat ambuja, i guess is the same... Ambuja Cements is the official name right now... let's use this only

 Sai: okay

 me: yess man, this WACC when i first saw i got totally blank... it seems too simple to be correct...

11:05 PM plus am not taking into account whether there r preferred shareholders... already too much haziness due to cost of equity, cost of debt, equity beta, debt beta bla bla bla... so assuming all equity as one...

  is that ok?

11:06 PM Sai: cheseyyi..

  where from did you get cost of debt?

11:07 PM me: there is another way... find a beta-asset, which is a weighted average of debt beta and equity beta

  this beta-assed can be directly used like in the SML equation to find WACC...

  in this approach debt-beta has to be assumed

11:08 PM bhaskar said i can assume it 0.3

  0.2, sorry

 Sai: oho

6 minutes

11:15 PM me: bhaskar disconnected :))

  ate his head a lot

 Sai: :D

  ha ha haa!!!!

 me: another discovery

  7.5%

  that is the avg market premium in india

11:16 PM Sai: oh cooooll..

  source of data?

 me: bhaskar

 Sai: ante how to mention in the report?

 me: so the CAPM eqn becomes Rf + beta * 7.5%

 Sai: good..

  chala thanks

  inka rechipotaa

 me: :)))

  wow, mere sher

  naa puli

  :P

11:17 PM Sai: do you maintain notes in Mat Man?

  inka better.. puli raja analedu

11:18 PM me: no yaar, i wrote 1-2 classes, then got fed up

11:19 PM how come debashis asking the same question?

  no. of quity shares

 Sai: everybody in class is planning to bank on your notes

 me: the data was there somewhere

 Sai: ee time lo heart breaking news cheppav kada

 me: :))

  the guy is giving slides na

11:20 PM Sai: ya...

 me: i wrote 3 lectures

  something

11:21 PM copied slides ;-)

 Sai: :)

 me: am trying to find where number of shares r given

  it was there somewhere

  go to shareholding pattern

  under equity

  that has all the numbers

11:22 PM Sai: oh okay...

  will it be of use to me?

  :D :D

 me: now don't copy to debashis

  like u copied his message to me

  :))

  and he copied it to me too

  same wordings

 Sai: coincidence!!

 me: i sent him the reply

  wow

11:23 PM Sai: debashis is not in my list

 me: amazing

  !

13 minutes

11:36 PM Sai: sent you an email

11:37 PM check if that report is of any use for your analysis

 me: hey, i can't open docx

  can u resend as doc?

 Sai: okay

11:39 PM re sent

10 minutes

11:49 PM me: thanks

  am using beta assuming it is levered

  when we have the values from your part, we will put the levered values into ine

  mine

11:50 PM Sai: okay

  is the value from capitaline levered Beta

  ?

 me: i feel so

 Sai: I will find unlevered Beta..

11:51 PM from it then..

 me: it shud show the actual correlation right

 Sai: yes

  any idea of corporate tax?

 me: bhaskar said 38.5%

 Sai: oh..

11 minutes

12:03 AM me: yaar am not getting this treasury rate anywhere

12:04 AM http://www.saraswatbank.com/view_section.jsp?lang=0&id=0,63,64

  this saraswat bank link says it is 9.23 %

  high value

  am taking it as 9%

  low value is 8.67%

12:05 AM Sai: http://www.dailymarkets.com/stocks/2008/11/19/india-stock-market-equity-risk-premium/

  this guy says

   I have used a 7.5% risk free rate going

12:06 AM me: oh

  so i will also use the same

12:07 AM Sai: kpmg tax rate survey 2008

  http://www.kpmg.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/Corporate-and-Indirect-Tax-Rate-Survey-2008v2.pdf

12:08 AM India (2008 rate = 33.99%/

 me: ohhh

  what about our CA

 Sai: emo

  was looking around for sources..

  that can be mentioned in references..

  came across this

12:09 AM me: ok

  using 33.99 then

 Sai: okay

 me: preserve the link

 Sai: sure

12:11 AM me: beta values i have to use capitaline ones only na?

12:13 AM Sai: yaa..

  i am using them ..

12:14 AM me: sent my excel

  take a look once, i will write some crap on it

 Sai: cool!

12:19 AM I was about to do an exactly similar analysis

  You globe about WACC

  I will globe about asset betas

  and CAPM model

  Thanks for the sheet..!!!

  naa work taggindi

12:20 AM one small doubt

  did Vinay kumar tell that debt Beta is zero in the class?

  as it is not risky

  ?

12:21 AM me: i don't remember

 Sai: okay

  debt beta = 0.2 ki any logic?

 me: brealy mayers mein it has been taken 0.1 and 0.2 in 2 places

 Sai: oho

 me: so this is realistic value

 Sai: coll

  okay

12:22 AM keep up the good work!!

12:23 AM me: hahaa, sure...

8 minutes

12:31 AM Sai: arey

  how did you find out asset beta

12:32 AM in what way is asset beta different from unlevered beta?

12:36 AM http://www.iese.edu/research/pdfs/DI-0488-E.pdf

12:37 AM u there?

6 minutes

12:43 AM me: yes

 Sai: ee pdf lo...

12:44 AM oka diff formula

12:45 AM undi

  I am getting some thing else..

 me: asset beta is different... if u use asset beta wala formula, then u don't need to use the weighted avg of returns wala fomula

12:46 AM Sai: what is asset beta formula

 me: weighted avg of debt and equity beta

 Sai: oho..

  anthenaa..

 me: check the doc i sent

12:47 AM Sai: I was under the assumption that asset beta = unlevered beta

12:48 AM me: no no

  unlevered is different

12:50 AM Sai: 7 page..

  he gave the same formula

12:51 AM me: the doc u sent spinned my head

  i closed it

  :))

 Sai: 7 page in your doc

 me: hmm, it looks fine to me...

12:52 AM Sai: where is your Beta unlevered

  formula in the same doc

12:53 AM me: did not find that

  i assumed beta given is the levered beta

 Sai: okay

  unlevered nuvvu calculate cheyyaledaa

12:54 AM me: cheyle

 Sai: okay

 me: what shud i do?

  go ahead with it?

 Sai: yes yes..

12:55 AM me: :)

12:58 AM Sai: I got some thing else with that formula

12:59 AM me: hmm

 Sai: Asset β
0.55244898
0.619724771
0.413505747
0.771509434

1:00 AM sorry

  man needi correct

  pukka

  now I am eating your brain

 me: how?

  :))

 Sai: :D

32 minutes

1:32 AM me: now what to comment

1:34 AM Sai: globe it

  based on text book theory

1:35 AM I don't think we need to make a huge report

 me: ok, will make it 2 pages... aur nahi ho raha

 Sai: bas