Let’s move on to what is probably the most critical new initiative, today.
Domain Expert initiative - Owner @rupeshtatiya
This has been something we have been keen on for quite some time.
Nothing new. We had our in-house domain experts right from the beginning
@hitesh2710 – dermatologist – Ajanta Pharma was identified early only due him
But we weren’t smart enough to figure out – that as VP membership grew – inevitably there would be more experts within VP itself - in possibly every domain! We have had some others like @desaidhwanil @GourabPaul, @Rakesh_Arora and a few more for sometime now.
We weren’t smart enough and Insightful enough in 2010 when we launched. We missed acknowledging …
That a collaborative free platform like VP would surely attract professionals or practitioners from every strata and every hue of human activity from agriculture to IT to steel or oil & gas - simply because investing is a bug that’s pervasive – everyone needs to become wealth compounding-smart (some realise early, some late 
). That we could have/should have had a structured way of engaging experienced professionals registered with VP from any domain with 8-10-15 years hands-on experience into our ongoing stock-research/scuttlebutt/analysis efforts.
For some years now, VP already has a few very senior CEO/CXO level members participating (mostly anonymously, for obvious reasons (through IDs that DO NOT give it away), sometimes in Insurance, sometimes in Pharma – they approached to write and make us better-informed on their own accord. I am sure among our lakhs of registered members there are probably 100’s of such very highly qualified folks with huge credentials lurking within VP. We simply don’t know about them.
While that may be the case, without me doing proper context-setting most Senior Investors in VP do not get the point of all this 
, so how is the Community expected to understand the singular importance that we now want to Accord to Domain Expertise building-up systemically at VP. So here is a couple of fond stories …from me.
When in 2011 we did the work on BT cotton (Kaveri seeds) farmers from Maharashtra and Andhra came in very handy and proved instrumental to our understanding and mapping the game in just 1 month of work-on-the-ground in 48 degree heat !! I was surprised that many farmers from remote areas like Beed/Jalna/Hingenghat invited me to come over to their village and talk to BT cotton dealers/distributors – they were mostly from within VP and friend-of-friends. Subsequently after we had published that highly-acknowledged scuttlebutt work (not just in investing community but by the listed company themselves) many Fund Managers approached me to ask if VP would provide them with a list of these valuable on-field contacts, and we happily did – as Collaborative work at the core of our founding principles (we knew by sharing openly we would benefit too) – these very (new) friends opened many many doors for us later in the VP journey. (incl the Forbes India, July 2015 issue inclusion of VP Platform).
Cutting the long story short – we inherently understood, but couldn’t put a finger on that edge that VP had. Many other Fund Managers told me when we were doing Astral Poly scuttlebutt – and folks reported on-ground from Delhi, Kolkata, and Bangalore of acceptance of Astral more than the 2 other worthy competitors - Donald, it looks like VP can do any survey in any city/village for free. I hadn’t thought of it that way before – and said Yes Sir, I guess we could. I realized we had this defining edge – superior early insights into any domain. Most senior Investors also realise that for the last 4-5 years -that is the ONLY EDGE left now.
Information flow, analysis skills are passe, and everyone has that today (and more so with AI). An entire breed that relied on (paid) Export Data for some momentum edge – that has also gone pooof!!
And yet, we failed to incentivise VP members – anyone with 8-10-15 years practitioners hands-on experience in any field - to come out in the open and claim their seat at the table as domain experts. Perhaps due to 2-3 main reasons:
- VP had become an intimidating place for folks new to investing even as we launched in 2010; we (initial set of passionate stock pickers) were already posting jargon-heavy (read RoE, free cash flow, blah blah) data-driven posts – so new folks felt hesitant to speak up/write normally about what they were seeing in the industry on the ground
- We didn’t have the foresight to VALUE and thus ACTIVELY ENCOURAGE the possible significant contribution-interaction that mid-to-senior industry professionals would bring to the table in any active discussion/dissection of a business in their industry on a systemic basis; sporadically it would happen like in some pharma discussions – like we learnt and demystified the entire intermediates-API-formulation-incipient jargons through domain expert interviews – and were early into pharma picks like Alembic, Ajanta Pharma, Shilpa Medicare – more by accident though than through planned systemic efforts
- Absence of any structured mechanisms to capture this embedded-value through
a) simple self-enrollment forms (VP internal) fill-up appeals on an ongoing basis
b) drives to attract external domain experts,
c) enable fortnightly/monthly domain discussions to accord them visibility and importance in all relevant/ongoing or planned scuttlebutt efforts
One naïve complaint of some senior investors has been that Arre Yaar Domain Investors have great value, only when they are investing-savvy. Get us investing-savvy domain investors, first. I realized it’s like chicken-egg situation at VP. It’s completely upto us to make our latent-domain-experts Investing Savvy – hey they already have the embedded incentive – why did they join VP – to become better investors, right.
That is why I am so glad the young turks like @rupeshtatiya and @nirvana_laha have understood the potential and owned up responsibility to drive this most important, (nay critical) activity internally within VP. As a first step, they will identify and approach relevant folks within VP (and even outside) and make Domain Expertise a highly-visible, and a highly-contributive participatory activity soon within VP.
This is an appeal to all 8-10-15 years working professional/business owner members at VP, please watch this space …we are coming after you
…for your own good …he he. We will figure out some good way to engage deeper with you publicly…with your consent …and behind the scenes…when we need to as an Industry Source like we have been doing. Needless to say all data will remain private! If you want to self-enrol please DM @rupeshtatiya @nirvana_laha
They are working first on what we earlier enumerated as #3 a,b,c missed opportunity tasks and more as part of the VP Domain Expert Initiative. Should anyone get any wrong ideas, needless to say this is another not-for-profit VP initiative (unlike commercial networks) aimed at strengthening the VP community from within to take our Collaborative Activity to the next level. We will never do anything that will compromise on the Founding Principles – Democratic, Collaborative, Insightful and Actionable Advise – to make us all better-informed investors.