an AGM, a few tit bits & great learnings

Hope & Ideas inspire men to achieve great milestones. With the recent release of Harry potter's final version of the movie, my thoughts hover around the story of its author JK Rowling. It started as a great idea on a delayed train from Manchester to London. JK Rowling came up with the idea of a boy who discovers he is a wizard. But it would be 7 years before the idea became a huge business worth millions of dollars. Woven in fiction and mystical sets, this is an inspirational story for every entrepreneur. Her life took a nose-dive, fighting poverty and depression, she lived in a mice-infested flat in Edinburgh and struggled to raise her baby daughter on a charity check. Great business are born in times of adversities and out of great but simple ideas. As simple as the story of stories.

Closer home we have several such inspirational rags to riches stories of Indian Businesses. There is something special about them and it became apparent to me only after I met an elderly shareholder during the 3M AGM. We were discussing the business prospects of 3M after the AGM when I met up with his senior gentleman. I was as usual bullish about a few innovative ideas and giving my pep talks on the pet subject. The unassuming elder intervened to tell me his experiences of MNC consumer companies he had invested in. He was sharing how cold and depressing his investments were in the MNC consumer story. He went on to say how his investment in Gillette never paid off any decent returns after he held them for like 5 years. He compared how having invested in an Indian company with deep Indian understanding would have paid off like Adani or Ambani or Biyani. What he went on to say was even more reveling.He said while the MNC executives work out off comfortable plush offices, their Indian counterparts actually toil it out to succeed in this very unique Indian markets. To succeed in our country, requires unique skills you understand only as an Indian. You need to grease palms of bureaucrats & ministers, require skills to work with carpenters & labourers, clear check posts, making adjustments all the time. Working around things, rather than working through is a unique recipe for Indian businesses. This, in his sense was key to identifying great businesses that will succeed. While I personally have least regard for Ambani businesses, and I hold them primarily responsible for such deep rooted corruption in Indian business, one can't ignore what this gentleman said. As an investor, I have never been glued to this filter, the filter of Indian workarounds. Great learning.

Then I also met those who were waiting (for the perfect bride). Waiting for the perfect correction. You can rarely start at the bottom of the markets. Every good investments performs badly for some of the times. Intelligent investors stick around until the bad turns around to good. As the Nobel Laureate & Behavioral Psychologist Daniel Kahneman said, the most natural way to think about a decision is not always the best way to make the Decision. Very thought provoking in investing paradigm.

Happy learning & investing.
Naresh