Great articles to read on the web

Books & Tutorials
1958
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1961
2 Likes
1962

“Does curiosity always lead to its own end?”

3 Likes
1963

Ian Cassel, the GOAT in Microcap space.
Very relevant in today’s time. Enjoy.

https://microcapclub.com/judas-goats/?ref=newsletter&attribution_id=66e17388cba8654fa5778004&attribution_type=post

4 Likes
1964

“We are not a species known for risk-taking, so human flourishing really depends on the explicit emphasis of exploration and openness to new experience. And yet it seems that the game is set up so that the most successful people are least incentivized to explore further. That all the trying new things and pushing boundaries and calling for revolution is likely to come from those with neither the power to get it done nor the competence to do it correctly.”

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/D4hHASaZuLCW92gMy/is-success-the-enemy-of-freedom-full

5 Likes
1965

“The political understanding of history leads us to view our situation in a distorted and inaccurate way. It implies that if you want to address social problems or challenges, then politics (whether electoral or revolutionary) is the only way to do it. It implies that the news and events we should pay attention to are political ones, because those are what will have the greatest impact.”

“
politics is, in a sense, downstream of these technological breakthroughs, as politics is determined and driven by the changes in material circumstances and lived experiences that those events brought.”

6 Likes
1966

I am a big fan of your reads that you share here. I’ve noticed that you’ve an eclectic reading repository. if I may ask, from where do you find such gems?

3 Likes
1967

Kunal Shah (Founder, Cred) & Shailendra Singh (PeakXV MD) on Business Models & Moats

  1. Capital is not a moat most of the time, until it is a few times. So capital can be a deterrent, a moat is basically a deterrent. If your competitor raises $500 billion and is hell bent on discounting, other people will be scared to enter your market and territory and so on.

  2. The way to think about moats is, no moat is permanent and no moat can give you a multi-decade advantage, but moat gives you a point in time advantage to build a company. Like all models will eventually get copied, and Kunal and I always say this, ‘Rarely are there any new ideas.’

  3. A lot of things will happen through serendipity. Most people are not mentally ready to embrace serendipity, which is that there is that accidental innovation in every company. You thought you were doing X, but the second, third order effect that you did not expect suddenly starts to play out

  4. One of the underrated things about improving decision making is time to think, because long-term decisions are scary, and you need time to think and mull over it and sleep over it for it to get formed in your head. And most people are just way too busy to make great decisions

  5. Many times we do not like random curiosity
 You will find extraordinarily great ideas that you can apply
 One practice that you should do across the company is to understand other businesses by letting the team present, ‘Well, why don’t you deep dive on Stripe, why don’t you deep dive on Peloton. Why don’t you deep dive on something else?’ And then, end the session by asking, 'What can we apply from this in our business?

  6. Every single customer, every single employee, every single investor, regulator, anybody you deal with, are all humans. And unless you do not spend time and understand how human behavior works, you will nearly not progress much. And don’t rely on instincts to figure this out. There is enough science out there to understand how humans behave how humans get motivated to do what they do, and how humans change their behavior

  7. Attachment is a great way to find the most important decisions to make. Detachment is a great way of building a good conviction on decisions I should make because attachment will never allow you to make good decisions.

  8. We are only as good as our next decision
 Everything, all of our success, everything we did yesterday is in the past. But today, if you look to the future, you’re only as good as your next decision

  9. Every single company is a FinTech company. If you have not figured it out by now. My request is to process every single company. Gaming companies are extraordinary FinTech companies. They run on the coin economy as a core concept and they hire economists who run the best games.

Source:

5 Likes
1968

if I may ask, from where do you find such gems?

Assuming the question was directed at me, I find stuff to read from these sources:

joincolossus weekly newsletter
Benedict Evans newsletter

https://marginalrevolution.com/?s=assorted+links

Kuntal Shah’s The Right Signal Telegram Channel
The rest from Twitter

28 Likes
1969

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1970

https://t.co/7YDMtUfMHL

Chemical sector outlook

2 Likes
1971

One of my favourite episodes so far

  • Nandan Co-founded Infosys (â‚č8.061 Trillion Market Cap)
  • he envisioned the India stack; Worked on Aadhar (Identity layer of India stack), UPI (Payment revolution), Account Aggregator (Lending/ Wealth revolution), OCEN (MSME revolution), ONDC (E-com revolution)
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1972
1 Like
1973
1 Like
1974
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1975

Good Tutorials, for Technical Analysis

6 Likes
1976

Warren Buffett’s Strategic Reduction in Bank of America Holdings

1977
1 Like
1978

Insights from Mohnish Pabrai

  1. Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have been successful for three reasons: First, they’re willing to be extremely patient. Second, when the opportunity presents itself, they don’t hesitate to act. Third, they have no concerns about being different from the crowd.

  2. Charlie says that for each of us, the opportunities that would truly make us wealthy are not going to come around every week they’ll come around every so often and they come around at unpredictable times but when they do come around and when you do recognize it uh you need to act very significantly and very quickly

  3. For most Investments if you can’t do the math in your head then it should be an automatic pass so there was no DCF model run

  • Investing in something like Coca-Cola didn’t require spreadsheets. Warren and Charlie didn’t run discounted cash flow models; they just thought very deeply about it.

  1. A lot of times in investing what happens and I’m very guilty of that is we tend to look at the kind of past performance of a of security and that taints the way we look at it and actually what you really ought to do is ignore the past just focus on the future

  2. When you have businesses with great business models you end up with dumb managers who do dumb things because even when they do dumb things they look really good because the business is so good

  3. One of the hardest things is having no concerns about being different from the crowd. You need to be okay with stepping away from the crowd and not caring about how people think of you based on your actions

  4. One of the reasons Warren and Charlie were willing to invest so heavily in Coke is because they knew it was ‘currency-proof,’ ‘thermonuclear-blast-proof,’ and essentially ‘bulletproof’ against almost any kind of disaster or economic downturn. If the world experienced an extinction-level event, and 6.5 billion people were wiped out, Coca-Cola would still come back and thrive.

  5. Warren and Charlie like to go through long histories of the companies that they study. they read every annual report since the company was public. Warren read every annual report of Coke from 1919 until the late 1980s, and one of his insights was that Coke’s unit case volume never went down, not in the Great Depression, not in World War II, not through all the stagflation of the 1970s. Every single year, unit case volume just went up

  6. Good capital allocators make all the difference. You can have an excellent business, but if the management is wasting money or investing in the wrong places, it will destroy value. I look for companies where the management knows how to reinvest profits wisely

  • Eg: In the 1980s, Coca-Cola’s management under Roberto Goizueta and Don Keough understood capital allocation better than previous managers. They sold off non-core businesses and focused on buying back stock
  1. Coca-Cola’s Business Model
  • The Coca-Cola company just produces fountains of cash. You just can’t lose money—you send the syrup, and you’re getting massive returns. The economics are incredible, and it’s very hard to undercut them.
  • When you get a Coke at a restaurant, they charge you $2 or more, but the Coca-Cola company gives it to the restaurant at maybe 15 cents. The restaurant loves it because it’s the highest margin item they sell, and it sells in huge volume.
  1. Mental models
  • Mental models help with understanding businesses deeply. For example, Coke uses ‘association tendency,’ placing itself at happy events like the Olympics and World Cup to associate with joy.
  • There’s also the ‘social proof tendency,’ where people see others drinking Coke and want to drink it too.

  1. The goal is to create situations where the upside is huge, but the downside is limited. In other words, you want to set up bets where, if you win, you win big, but if you lose, the impact is minimal. That’s how you achieve outsized returns.

  2. The key to success in investing is to make very few bets, make them infrequently, and when the stars align, bet big. You don’t need to invest all the time—just when the opportunity is right. You can be wrong many times, but if you’re right on one big bet, it will cover for the mistakes

  3. I’ve built my entire investment approach on cloning. There’s no shame in copying someone else’s good ideas. If someone has spent a lifetime honing their strategy, why not borrow it? Warren Buffett says he’s a shameless cloner too, so I’m in good company

  4. Investing isn’t about being active all the time. Sometimes you’ll go for long periods without making a move. The ability to do nothing when the conditions aren’t right is one of the most important traits for an investor.

  5. Stay within your circle of competence. Know what you understand and stick to it. I don’t invest in businesses I don’t understand. If you step outside your circle of competence, you are setting yourself up for failure

  6. I focus on businesses that are simple to understand. If a business is too complex, with too many moving parts, it becomes difficult to predict its future. I want to be able to explain a business in one or two sentences

  7. Investing isn’t a short-term game. If you want to be successful, you have to think in decades, not years or quarters. Great businesses take time to grow, and the magic of compounding only works if you stay in the game long enough

Source:

8 Likes
1979

Data Centres - Investment Theme by Vivek Bajaj.pdf (7.5 MB)

  1. Introduction to Data Centres
    Data centres are specialized facilities housing IT and communication equipment such as servers, storage devices, and network routers. Their primary function is to offer secure environments for hosting data racks, with adequate power supply and cooling systems to prevent overheating.
  • Types of Data Centres
    • Captive: Owned and operated by companies for their private use.
    • Colocation: Large facilities renting out space to third parties.
    • Hyperscalers: Large-scale cloud service providers.
    • Edge: Small-sized centres focusing on low-latency, last-mile data processing.
  1. Global and Indian Data Centre Market
    The global data centre market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 10.5%, reaching a market size of $600 billion. India, although contributing 20% of global data, has only a 3% share in data centres, indicating massive growth potential. By 2030, India’s data consumption is expected to exceed that of developed markets, driven by increasing internet usage, 5G adoption, and IoT expansion.
  2. Demand Drivers
  • Rising digital technologies and data usage.
  • Increasing demand for data storage and management.
  • Growth of cloud computing, AI, and IoT.
  • Low-cost data in India and the rise of mobile internet users.
  1. SWOT Analysis for Data Centres in India
  • Strengths: Large consumer base, growing mobile internet penetration, increasing 5G rollout.
  • Weaknesses: High energy consumption, lack of infrastructure in smaller cities.
  • Opportunities: Urbanization, tech adoption, digital initiatives.
  • Threats: Competition from global markets, regulatory challenges.
  1. Key Metrics
  • Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) is a key metric for data centre efficiency, with an ideal PUE of 1.0 indicating no energy waste. India’s average PUE has improved from 2.5 in 2007 to 1.55 in 2022, showing growing energy efficiency.
  1. Indian Data Centre Landscape
    India has an operational capacity of 1,074 MW across 163 data centres as of March 2024, making it the 13th largest data centre market globally. Mumbai and Chennai lead the market due to their strong undersea cable ecosystems, accounting for nearly 60% of the country’s data centre activity.
  2. Companies Involved in Data Centre Infrastructure and Development
  • Cummins India
    Cummins is a global provider of backup power solutions, particularly for data centres. Its reliable diesel generators are essential for data centres to maintain uninterrupted power supply. Cummins India Ltd. is part of the Cummins Inc. Group USA.
  • Blue Star
    Known for its heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) solutions, Blue Star has already worked on projects like the Yotta Data Centre in Noida. The company provides turnkey solutions for mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems and is the largest after-sales service provider for air conditioning and refrigeration products in India.
  • Anant Raj Ltd
    Engaged in the development of IT parks and SEZs, Anant Raj is converting a commercial property with a potential leasable area of 5.66 million square feet into a 300 MW data centre. The company’s initial 3 MW of this project became operational in Manesar in FY23, with 50 MW more expected soon.
  • Techno Electric & Engineering Company Ltd (TEECL)
    TEECL is developing hyper-density data centres, starting with a 24 MW IT load data centre in Chennai, scheduled to launch in Q3 FY25. The company plans additional centres in Kolkata, Mumbai, and Noida over the next five years. It is also working with RailTel Corporation to deploy edge data centres across 102 cities in India.
  • Netweb Technologies India (NTI)
    NTI is a leading provider of high-end computing solutions. Known for its supercomputers, the company offers data centre servers, AI systems, and private cloud solutions. It caters to clients like IIT Jammu, IIT Kanpur, and Graviton Research Capital LLP.
  • Aurionpro Solutions Limited
    Aurionpro partners with Webwerks to operate Tier 3 data centres in cities like Navi Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Bangalore. The company provides turnkey solutions for data centre design, consultancy, and master planning. It is also planning to develop 100 MW data centres in the coming years.
  • Black Box
    An ICT solutions provider, Black Box offers system integration services in areas like data centres, cybersecurity, and digital solutions. In FY24, the company secured deals worth $105 million for data centre solutions and other significant contracts.
  • E2E Networks
    E2E Networks focuses on AI-centric cloud infrastructure and is expanding its data centre capacity from 1000 KW to 4200 KW over the next seven years. This move will support AI/ML application development and deployment.
  1. Growth Drivers for Indian Data Centres
  • Increasing internet penetration: India’s internet penetration is expected to grow from 50% to 90% by 2030.
  • Mobile data consumption: Per capita data usage is projected to reach 62 GB per month by 2028, far surpassing current consumption rates in developed markets.
  1. Energy and Infrastructure Requirements
    Data centres require robust energy supplies and infrastructure for cooling, IT equipment, and electrical management. As the demand for data increases, companies like Cummins, Blue Star, and Anant Raj are essential players in building the necessary infrastructure.

Conclusion

The data centre industry is a critical part of India’s growing digital economy. With increasing internet penetration, mobile data consumption, and the adoption of technologies like 5G, AI, and IoT, the demand for data storage and processing infrastructure will surge. Companies like Cummins, Blue Star, TEECL, and others are well-positioned to benefit from this boom by providing the necessary power, cooling, and computing infrastructure.

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