Finance, Tech and Everything Else...

Bewildered or better yet befuddled or even better blown out of their minds, that was the reaction of people when they heard oil hit negative. One might wonder how can a commodity price go negative. How can the buyer be paid to purchase oil, I mean if someone paid me to shop, that would be amazing right? Well, let us try to understand a few things first.  I promise to super simplify it for you. This will be in 2 parts. 1st one is the Global oil scenario and the 2nd one is the negative oil price. Part 1 – Global Oil Scenario. What is OPEC? OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) is group of oil exporting countries who control the prices by regulating supply and demand. How can they do this? Because this group own’s the majority of world oil reserves and they are the top producers of oil.  OPEC was formed way back in 1960. OPEC currently has 13 member countries. What is OPEC +? In 2016, OPEC countries and Non-OPEC countries who produced oil joined ...

Read the first four parts here Artificial Intelligence - A New Future - Part 1 Artificial Intelligence - Technical Nuances - Part 2 Artificial Intelligence - The Employment Scenario - Part 3 Artificial Intelligence - The Employment Scenario - Sector-wise Analysis - Part 4 Technology is coming and is going to come and it will be a key driver of growth in the future. Therefore, we need to change our perspective from Humans versus AI to Humans with AI. As Garry Kasparov rightly said, “The future is of “human plus machine combination” — merging the brute force of calculation, machines, and algorithms with human experience and strategic overview”. Rather than looking at AI only from the angle of employment, we need to tilt our heads and look at its positive side too! Yes, at some point of time, technological advancement will surpass the rate at which jobs are created. But as job creation is dependent on multiple factors, who knows, something new might come up then? Maybe employment op...

“Down with the machines!”, “Down with the machines!”, “Say NO to machines!” were the chants of the Textile workers in 1811 when the Industrial Revolution threatened to replace them with machines. Well, history does have a habit of repeating itself, hence, I am here today writing on the topic of “Artificial intelligence – The Employment Scenario” If you have read my previous two blog posts ( AI - A new future - Part 1 and AI - Technical Nuances - Part 2 ), then you know what AI is, and if you don’t, to put it simply, AI is the technology which helps computers to think and behave like humans.  Machine learning is a subset of AI and it enables the software to learn by itself. And this is what makes this technology revolutionary - the intelligence exhibited by machines which till date was found only in humans. Now, this sparked off a concern that robots will take away our jobs, so even we started screaming, “Down with robots!”, “Down with robots!”, "Say NO to robots!"....

AI is quite a lengthy discussion isn't it? In my last post, we took a page out of our history textbooks to see the impact of automation throughout the ages and also discussed how job creation works. Today, let us take a closer look at how automation will impact employment in India! In case you haven't read my previous blog post, you can read it by clicking the links below .  As this is a continuation of the previous post, I would request you to read that first. Artificial Intelligence - A New Future - Part 1 Artificial Intelligence - Technical Nuances - Part 2 Artificial Intelligence - The Employment Scenario - Part 3 In India, the economy is divided broadly into three sectors, and the contribution of the three sectors to India’s GDP a s per Economic Survey of 2017-18 is as follows : Tertiary sector (Service) - 53.66%. Secondary sector (Manufacturing) - 29.02% Primary sector (Agriculture) - 17.32%. If you look at the graph ...

Read Part 1 -  Artificial Intelligence - A New Future - Part 1 In my last post on AI, I had ended saying it was a new future indeed! Amazing wasn’t’ it? That AI could do so much, bring so much change, that too at a massive scale! If I have to explain AI in short then I will say, "AI is the technology which helps, computers to think and behave like humans". And this is validated by the Turing test.  The Turing test was created by Alan Turing to determine whether a machine is intelligent. How does the test work? A human will ask questions to another human and a machine and based on the answers, the questioner will decide who is the human and who is the machine. If the machine manages to convince that the questioner that it is a human, then we can say that the machine is "Artificially Intelligent".  Oxford dictionary defines intelligence as follows, "The ability to learn, understand and think in a logical way about things". Here, it becomes critical for...

IBC is short for Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, a revolutionary law implemented by the government in 2016 for the resolution of corporate insolvency and bankruptcy. Insolvency is a situation that arises due to the inability to pay off debts. Under IBC, there is a shift of power from debtors to creditors who drive the resolution process. Now before we decide whether 180 days is too long or too short for insolvency resolution, let me tell you a story. Let us Imagine that in the coming years, you become an entrepreneur and you set up your own firm. You have a big team, your own cabin and a wonderful office.   Wonderful isn’t it? Everything was going good until you found out that your biggest client has kept the payment of your invoice pending for more than 6 months. Not just you, many other creditors too. Then you get a shock, as you come to know that the company has filed for insolvency. This company owes you 1 crore rupees, you are worried, will I get this money back, or wi...

This was a piece written by me back in December, 2018 which never saw the light of the day until today. I shall follow this up with a part-2 covering the events of the trade war which occurred in 2019. “It is the rise of Athens and the fear it instilled in Sparta, that made war inevitable”. These are the famous words of a Greece historian – Thucydides and it seems very apt in the current trade war between the two most powerful economies of the world – USA & China. Till January 2018, everything was going pretty fine for both parties, the Chinese grew due to exports, Americans could buy things cheap. But then one fine day, Mr. Trump decided to cite the reasons of a threat to National security, Trade deficit, injury to US Industries and lay tariffs on Chinese products. In the course of the trade war Mr. Trump justified his stance by quoting IPR Theft and Unfair trade practices of the Chinese i.e. by not allowing foreign companies to enter the market unless they partner with Chin...

Imagine the day, when our Jawans will not die and their children will not cry… Imagine the future, when our farmers will be able to increase their income and not die in poverty… Imagine the day, when the nation’s poor will not be illiterate but will get access to quality education… Imagine the glorious future, wherein residents of rural areas will not die only because of one reason - a dearth of health-care centers… The three dots at the end are for your imagination for an amazing future, but you will probably be like, Lakshmy… Is this possible? Yes! Don’t just imagine. Embrace the reality. Soon the day will come when our Jawans will not die, and their children will not cry, as artificially intelligent robots will man the border and this is not science fiction! US Defense Agency - DARPA with Boston Dynamics, has created spy robots and drones, which can be sent before soldiers to get information. There is also a state-of-art rough terrain robot called the “BigDog”, which ca...