'Emerging India' a shortSTORY
(This shortstory was written by me a few years ago, but I think it is more relevant even today ! Read and Enjoy!!)
Emerging India !
By CA RajivKHATLAWALA
The banquet hall of the Five Star Hotel was packed.
The fact that the one-day conference was being held in this tier II city had excited the investor and financial intermediaries alike. And the theme of the conference was even more ‘exciting’ and ‘sexy’ as one of the financial intermediaries put it – “Emerging India – Asia’s best investment destination’ . This seemed to have caught the fancy of the hundred and twenty participants who had gathered in the luxurious banquet hall. This is despite the steep conference fee of Ten thousand five hundred rupees – which failed to deter the registrations.
Outside the banquet hall, about six to seven leading financial intermediaries including stock brokers and a couple of banks had paid through their noses to get ‘stall space’ admeasuring about 120 square feet. And they were using each inch of this space to display their financial products with banners, posters and even LCD TVs. And to top it, these stalls were manned by no less than the managerial level personnel, suggesting that they meant serious business! The scene immediately reminded one of stalls which children put up in the school fun-fairs!
Inside of the hall, arrangement was modern, with scores of circular tables, around which chairs placed in a semi circle, so that each participant would face the speaker and the podium and the small stage. And the financial intermediaries had made it a point not to leave the inside of the hall empty. They had littered banners and standees across the hall. Each of these banners and standees attempted to grab the attention of the participants and build up what their advertising agencies would have called ‘ brand recall’. But to a novice observer as most participants seemed to be, these did no more than help in ‘Brand confusion’ and probably by the end of the seminar, most participants would forget these brands and the sponsors’ money would go down the drain- or so it seemed.
In one of such semi-circled chair surrounding a circular table placed diagonal to the podium , I took up a middle seat. I was a little early hoping to meet a friend whose company was one of the six sponsors -but my effort seemed wasted as he was too busy handling the stall and interacting to seemingly interested early participants. So I concluded that taking my place inside the hall would be a better idea.
Seated to my right was a man who seemed to be in his early sixties. The one to my left was yet empty and presently a student-like youngster rushed to occupy it. As I watched around me, in a matter of a few minutes most of the hall was packed. It seemed like everyone was talking to everyone and I too found myself talking to the not-so-young person next to me.
“Hello I am Aditya Shah from Creative Investing Educators” I introduced myself, handing over, with both hands, my latest visiting card. Investing education is the offshoot of our investment consultancy, and I thought it appropriate to hand out the investing education visiting card rather than that of our consultancy.
“Oh! Hello. I am Rameshbhai from Gandhi Marg, you know the street opposite to the railway station. You see, I was looking forward to this type of a seminar and it is great that the organisers have chosen our small city this time. Let me tell you frankly – I have come here only – or mainly – to listen to Mr Nirmish Seth of The Alliance Bank. I watch him regularly on TV and he is quite knowledgeable.” My fellow participant seemed to say this almost in a single breath!
I nodded, while I observed that the young man on my left too was impressed by our fellow participant. Impromptu, he too added “Yes Sir. Even I recently heard him talk on a TV show and he is an encyclopaedia - really filled with data. By the way, I am Kunal and I have just recently completed my MBA in Finance from Delhi.” He shook his firm hands with me and then with Rameshbhai – truly the etiquette worthy of an MBA. The youngster, turning towards me, enquired “Sorry, but what did you say your company name was?”
“Creative Investing Educators” I replied.
“I see. Well, I did not know there were firms in the investing education business”
“Yes” I explained “There are many part time trainers , but not many full time trainers like us, even across India”
It seemed that Rameshbhai was not too convinced of my line of business as he interjected “What is it to learn in Investing? We can attend a few such seminars and learn a lot out of them. And in fact many of them are even free. And yes, I am sure you are aware about the ‘Pathshala’ programs running on various TV channels” he exclaimed
Nodding to him I replied “Yes Rameshbhai. You are right to some extent. These seminars and TV programs can surely give you macro guidance if you are a beginner. But frankly most of them just tell you what to do or even what not to; without suggesting anything about how to”.
It was Kunal’s turn to provide inputs to our deliberations. “But, you see, in our MBA curriculum, we are also taught ‘how to’. And we are quite equipped with all the case studies and simulations”
I smiled. My mind raced across the times when I was a youngster myself and the times when my first brush with the stock markets – while we were in the middle of a great bull market in the early nineties. When you are in a bull market, how uncanny it is to assume that you have an inborn talent in the art of investing, only to be proved drastically wrong in the next bear market.
Coming back to the present discussion, my mind seemed more enlightened to the huge misconception about investing that the aged as well as the young carry with themselves. In fact the basic premise for my starting an investing education company was to eradicate these very misconceptions! But with the strong views of my fellow participants in the seminar, it seemed that it may take me a longer than anticipated time to get satisfied in this context.
It was already 10.06 am as I glanced at my watch and there was a hustle on the stage. The dignitaries had seated themselves on the chairs put up on the stage for this purpose and I could observe that one chair was still unoccupied. Most probably it was meant for Mr Nirmish.
At exactly 10.10 am the session started and there was pin drop silence. The organisers urged, or almost threatened, the audience to put their mobiles on silent mode and inadvertently one of the mobiles in the hall went abuzz and all heads turned towards the person holding it.
The organisers announced the first speaker of the morning who was a representative of the sponsoring bank and he gave a rather detailed introduction of himself and his employer. At one moment I thought that we had gathered in the annual function of the bank!At last, after almost quarter of an hour, he stopped, to everyone’s relief. The second time slot was reserved for another sponsor, this time a broking firm. The organiser announced the name of the head of equities of the brokerage in question and it seemed we may have a better one hour.
The Head of equities did not prove me wrong. He did talk quite vehemently about the India growth story. He even gave an eye catching PowerPoint presentation full with anecdotes and some data. He was strongly trying to tell the audience why they should start investing today – even when the Sensex has been rising – from sub-8000 points since the Lehman crises to the current 19000 levels. He almost suggested that FIIs do not have any other destination other than the Indian markets and with their continuous inflows, they (his firm) are anticipating at least a 20-25% return in the coming six months.
I was observing that Rameshbhai was busy writing down notes and points and he already filled up three pages out of the Ten-page thin note pad provided by the organisers. I presume he may not have taken such detailed notes with such interest, even while in college! Kunal too was writing down something but he was much behind Rameshbhai – as he filled up only three-fourth of the first page.
The Head of Equities of the broking firm now seemed at the end of his gospel and he seemed quite satisfied with the audience as they were listening to him with high interest. Taking this as an opportunity, he even injected his firm’s name more than a couple of times in the presentation – after all, his firm has invested a big sum for co-sponsoring the event.
It was lunch time now and we were given the necessary lunch coupons. During lunch, we had a couple of more participants in discussion and the discussion directed towards the present investing scenario. Kunal was providing some good fundamental data, some of it out of the last presentation and the listeners seemed quite pleased with words like GDP growth, de-coupling , infrastructure spending , the telecom revolution etc.
......to be continued......
-A ShortSTORY by CA Rajiv Khatlawala-
