Advisor and Management Consultant - Business Consu Manish Marwah is the principal partner in Sapphire Consulting Group, one of India's leading strategic advisory and management consulting firms.Manish Marwah has also expertise in creating awareness as per the requirement of the society and to communicate this to the masses through series of articles and in the leading journals. Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 0 0 0 119

Articles from Advisor and Management Consultant - Business Consu

Global food inflation is on the rise … 2008-03-10 07:24:00 Global wheat, rice, maize and soybean prices have increased to new multiyear highs. The CRB food stuff index has rise 23.7% y-o-y in December 2007. The FAO’s food price index rose by 40% in 2007, on the top of the already 9% increase the year before, and the poorest countries spent 25% more in 2007 on imported food.The prices of grain-fed meat, eggs and dairy products are also significantly up spurring wide spread inflation throughout the consumer food market.In India, healthy buffer stock and the government’s efforts to restrict exports have helped in keeping domestic food prices (especially of grains and pulses) insulated so far (In fact, NCDEX agri index is currently quoting marginally down y-o-y). However, with a lag, some amount of pass-through of higher international prices in domestic food prices will be inevitable. In India, domestic demand supply situation is also very tight in certain agro commodities like wheat and edible oil, any adverse impact on output could potential ...

Approach In Agriculture 2008-03-08 19:29:00 AGRICULTURE, The Next Big OpportunityDespite India's dominent position as a producer in word agriculture, India has a Meager 1.5% share of global agritrade.This is because both, productivity levels(yields) as well as the level of food processing in India,continues to languish below that of comparable geographies. Thus,the potential for growth in this sectior is huge and could in turn trigger growth of the intire economy, driving GDP growth. Recognizing this potential, the government has decided to step up investments in this sector, open it up to the private sector by premitting contract farming which should see the growth rate of the agricultural sector more than double over the next few years helping India achieve a GDP growth of 8%.India occupies a dominant position in world agriculture. In India, 52% of total land is cultivable as against 11% which is the world average. Also, of the 60 soil types in the world, India has nearly 46. India thus has the second largest gross cropped ar ...

Time to Revisit 2008-03-06 07:05:00 The Indian economy is booming, stock markets are buoyant, homegrown entrepreneurs are spreading their wings, exports are growing, and consumerism isrising. In this scenario, it is definitely worth revisiting the issue of full Capital Account Convertibility (CAC). Most likely, CAC would improve the business environment, giving Indian industry access to lost-cost capital and the economy more options for asset allocation, bringing in higher inflows and improving the confidence level among foreign investors.But is the time right?But is the time right?When Global imbalances are worsening, commodities are in strong bull cycle, interest rates are rising all over the globe, inflation is looming and asset markets sky rocketing, will introduction of full CAC will bring desired results?Answer lies in India’s approach…Though RBI is revisiting the issue of capital account convertibility again after 1997, it will still favor a phased roll out of full CAC in India - probably a time horizon of nex ...

Whats Driving Indian Consumerism 2008-03-04 07:32:00 India’s baby boomer generation has grown up and unlike their parents who experienced guilt pangs every time they spent money, this generation has no such qualms and believes in living it up. One can attribute this largely to the fact that today’s consuming class has not only grown up in the post liberalization era but also has more choice too, both in terms of job opportunities as well as lifestyle choices. Better economics (India is the fourth largest economy in terms of Purchasing Power Parity in the world) and the country’s growing eminence as a cheap and par excellence service provider, is seeing to it that global companies flock to India to grab a share of the growing consumer pie. Moreover, as markets in the developed nations are simultaneously getting saturated, India’s 250 million, and growing middle class is a big lure for global behemoths.India’s ’Demographic’ DanceIndia is just the right age and is currently the youngest nation in the world with 65% of its bill ...

Infrastructure: an India priority 2008-02-01 04:17:00 Intro: India’s infrastructure spend at 3.5% of GDP is not only much lower than China’s spend at ~11% of GDP but needs to go up to at least 4% of GDP by FY12 if current growth rates are to be sustained. This would require an investment of over Rs12,265 bn across sectors over the next six years, even at a conservative estimate. But unlike in the past when most of the investment in infrastructure was made by the government, this time around the government has decided to act as a facilitator preferring to fund projects through public-private partnerships (BOT route). This has opened up several opportunities for private players and FDI investors with IRR as high as 25% even for low-margin infrastructure projects like roads. As for investors, with market capitalization of infrastructure companies set to increase by over US$100 bn over the next 3-5 years, returns would clearly outweigh risks in the medium to long term.Base case scenarioKeeping gross capital formation (GCF) as a share of ...

Media & Entertainment: The sunrise sector 2008-01-29 03:33:00 It’s truly the dawn of a new era of entertainment. For the Indian consumer it is a time of multiple choices as he can choose from a bouquet of over 300 channels on TV, several FM stations on radio and has a choice of 3-5 movies at multiplexes. For the entertainment industry is time to rake in the moolah as the share of consumer spend on entertainment is increasing and to gain mind share advertising companies are increasing spend. And for the government, it means more revenues by way of taxes. Sure the multiple choices come at an extra cost. But with technology having made significant advances and the quality of entertainment having improved, the Indian consumer is not complaining.The turnover of the Indian entertainment industry is estimated at ~Rs250 bn in FY05 and likely to witness a CAGR of ~20% between FY04-10 to touch Rs606 bn by FY10. The highest growth is likely to be witnessed by Radio (~31% CAGR) followed by Television (~20% CAGR) and Films (19% CAGR). However, it’s the Te ...

Sugar-Can it help to somewhat relieve India 2008-01-18 03:16:00 India spends close to $30 bn yearly in importing crude oil, which amounts roughly to 30 percent of its total annual imports. With crude prices having doubled over the past two years and presently hovering at around $70 per barrel, a sustained rally could lead to higher inflation and a possible slowdown in industrial growth across most sectors of the Indian economy. Presently crude oil prices are at an all time high, whereas raw sugar is close to 40 percent of its all time high. Ethanol, which is produced from sugarcane is much cheaper than most petroleum products and can easily be mixed with petrol as a fuel in automobiles & other industrial applications. Back during the last oil crisis in the 1970’s Brazil introduced a program to use ethanol in automobiles to decrease crude oil imports. At present 100 percent ethanol is used in roughly 40 percent of the cars in Brazil, with the remaining using ethanol blended with gasoline.Apart from ethanol, another by-product of sugarcane call ...

Balancing Act 2008-01-17 00:48:00 “More than anytime in history, mankind faces crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total destruction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly” – Woody AllenThe US subprime fiasco has forced US and European central banks to open their liquidity floodgates and subsequent 50 bps rate cut by US Fed was so called “corrective measures” to contain damage to aggregate demand. The market is also expecting couple of more rate cuts in coming months so as to prevent already slowing US economy from going into recession. However other central banks are still hawkish or neutral with the main policy objective of fighting inflation and its expectation. This un-alignment of interest rate outlook has resulted in so called “structural decline” in US Dollar against the most of the world currencies particularly Euro and emerging markets (EM) currencies. Equity markets all over the world (more particularly EM equities) are rejoicing these dyn ...