The accounting equation, a fundamental identity of accounting, states that: Assets = Liabilities + Owner’s Equity A business converts debt (liabilities) and equity (owner’s equity) into assets that generate cash flows. Those on the right side of the equation make…
Over the last three years, entrepreneurship has captured India’s imagination, and for good reasons. Never in our history has it been possible for first-generation entrepreneurs to start companies, raise seed capital and build a business in the way we have…
Has the Indian startup opportunity been wildly over-estimated? Mahesh Murthy’s article on this question has triggered a debate. Mahesh feels the “copy-paste” approach will not work in India — provided that most of India’s highly-valued startups are simply clones of successful US…
In his book Zero to One, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Peter Thiel addresses the distinction between globalization and technology. Globalization constitutes “horizontal progress”, he writes, or “taking things that work somewhere and making them work everywhere”; and China is the “paradigmatic…
In my op-ed for Mint, I write about the potential applications bitcoin could have specifically for emerging markets like India: India’s banking and financial services industry has incumbents that are inert, sloth-like and highly risk-averse. The banking industry in particular…
In his new book Zero To One, entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel writes: At the macro level, the single word for horizontal progress is globalization – taking things that work somewhere and making them work everywhere. China is the…
The economic liberalisation of 1991 was the second independence in Indian history. It represented a tectonic shift in policies, the start of the end of ‘licence raj’, and unshackled the growth of the country. Time has come for the third…
For several decades, Silicon Valley has had a near-monopoly on innovation. The Valley emerged out of America’s deep commitment to higher education and scientific research, combined with the American will to maintain leadership in defence technology. Through the second half…
Rising unemployment and income disparity has shaken democracies across the Western world in the last year. Unemployment among young people in particular has been persistent and pervasive — the United States saw the highest ever youth unemployment in 2011, and…