What Else

Starting of as a product just to put balance on your mobile phone, PayTM sure has achieved a lot. Not just charging utility, it evolved into digital wallet while also cornering E-commerce. Its hot red in market right now and it has caught a lot of attention due to its upcoming IPO. In 2010, PayTM started as a platform to let people top up their mobile phone balance. By 2014, it became a digital wallet platform. You could load money into the wallet and make payments to utility companies. For instance, you could pay your electricity bills. And in 2016, a surprise move by the Indian government (Demonetisation) gave a fillip to digital payments, and through it PayTM. But, what does the company do really — Are they a digital wallet? Payments bank? E-commerce company (a bet that didn’t quite pan out)? Fantasy sports? Ticketing (part of their commerce and cloud segment)? Mutual funds? Stockbroking? Insurance? Well, almost everything. So, perhaps PayTM is in some ways what many people would ca...

The Rise in Inflation Be it fuel prices, cost of transportation, commodity cost, inflation is on the rise and everything is crawling up. Companies that are consumer facing have to raise their price since cost of the input have been hiked.  Unfortunately for companies it is not that easy, they cant get away with rising price because that would hurt their customer portfolio but if they don't their margins are going suffer. The Story Let’s begin this story in the 1960s. At a time when inflation was the talk of the town. The humorist Art Buchwald, writing for Washington Post sounded an ominous alarm. In a column titled “Packaged Inflation”, he revealed how price increases were being concealed. He took a dig at the American industry for “devising new methods to make the product smaller while making the package larger”. Smaller product. Larger package. Same price. He was talking about an idea that is now popularly known as “shrinkflation”. It’s as relevant today as it was in the 1960s. W...

Rise of Inflation Be it fuel prices, cost of transportation, commodity cost, inflation is on the rise and everything is crawling up. Companies that are consumer facing have to raise their price since cost of the input have been hiked.  Unfortunately for companies it is not that easy, they cant get away with rising price because that would hurt their customer portfolio but if they don't their margins are going suffer. Pre IPO PayTM Starting of as a product just to put balance on your mobile phone, PayTM sure has achieved a lot. Not just charging utility, it evolved into digital wallet while also cornering E-commerce. Its hot red in market right now and it has caught a lot of attention due to its upcoming IPO.