The 2019 Indian elections, which begin in less than a week, loom large in Diggaj Mogra’s life. It’s all he has time for. “If you were to register as a candidate today, by tomorrow you would have 50 different companies calling you saying, ‘We’ll do SMS for you, give you databases, etc.’,” says Mogra, a … Read more
The humble debit card may already be on the verge of obsolescence in India. A couple of months ago, I had questioned the logic of the fee structure for card payments—particularly debit cards—in a piece titled “How to kill cash”. Banks across the board have little incentive to push for greater use of offline card … Read more
Five years ago, India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) made big promises with regard to health. Specifically, it promised a reduction in out-of-pocket spending. Very few of these promises actually came to fruition, though. For instance, a pharmaceutical policy and a policy to curb Chinese imports from dominating the bulk drugs market were announced, but … Read more
DP Sengupta, 83, shuffles from living room to bedroom amidst a cacophony of ringing landline phones. Ignoring the calls, he scrounges, instead, for an Indian Express clipping from 1976. Ours is a telephonic chat, but one can still vividly picture the bald, bearded and baritoned scientist going from room to room during the conversation. Sengupta … Read more
Having spent over three decades practising Oncology in the US and India, Dr BS Ajaikumar is hardly one for the limelight. Just last month, however, Dr Ajaikumar, chairman and CEO of Healthcare Global Enterprises (HCG), India’s largest private chain of cancer hospitals, found himself the villain of the piece on social media. He was branded … Read more
Question: Can India shift entirely to sustainable energy? The short answer is yes. The long answer is what you’re here for. The brilliant British physicist, mathematician and renewable energy advocate David MacKay has an excellent book called Sustainable Energy—Without the Hot Air (from which a significant chunk of the philosophy has been derived). Which is … Read more
A hospital-private equity deal is always in the works in India. Entrepreneurs prefer to buy, not build. For obvious reasons. Borrowing is limited for acquisitions, owners need equity financing. Why not. A mid-to-large size hospital is a 15-20 year business, yet it’s being grown with funds on 5 to 8-year exit plans. It’s a necessary … Read more
Imagine a travel or food-ordering site’s checkout page circa 2010-14. Credit cards. Debit cards. Netbanking. Cash on delivery. That’s about it. Then came the wallets. Mobikwik, and Paytm, and FreeCharge. Airtel Money. Amazon Pay. Phonepe. More wallets from everyone and their uncle. Then came the Unified Payments Interface, or UPI—the holy grail of instantaneous payments … Read more
Sundar Pichai, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg—meet Margrethe Vestager, Lina Khan and Dina Srinivasan. Vestager is the European Union’s (EU) competition commissioner; Khan, a law student in her late twenties; and Srinivasan, a veteran ad-tech entrepreneur. Three women, one goal: dismantle the dominance of Big Tech. Vestager, Khan and Srinivasan have decoded Pichai’s Google, Bezos’s Amazon … Read more
When it comes to opium production, India is one of the largest producers and exporters of opium. But while India supplies the world with opioids—the cheapest, most effective painkillers out there—the story back home is very different. We are only equipped to provide opioids for 40,000 patients—less than 1% of the national requirement. At the … Read more