The Right Combo?

The Indian cricket team management has been struggling to arrive at a strategy in terms of the number of bowlers to be included in the playing eleven.

For me it is very simple, we should always go with 7 batsmen (including our rockstar wicketkeeper). In Tendulkar, Yuvraj & Ganguly we definitely have the skill and experience to share at least 10 overs. For God's sake, Tendulkar has more than a 100 wickets in one dayers! I am sure if he had been bowling regularly, he would have had more than 250 to his credit today :-) Ganguly is a pain in the **** with his slow medium deliveries and Yuvraj has proved to be an effective slow bowler more than once. I would go with 4 regular bowlers even if it is a belter of a pitch.

Agreed that once in a while there will be situations where part-timers (read Yuvraj) will get hit for 5 sixes in an over, but we will also have an extra No. 7 batsman (read Robin) in the team to see us through ...

Bangalore Real Estate - Hot or Not?

It's been long and I am back with an interesting topic - real estate situation in Bangalore. We have had a BIG BOOM in this sector and prices have at least doubled in all major cities in India over the last 2-3 years. At least in Bangalore, this has been a topic of dicussion in almost every (guy) get-togther apart from discussing the extra-ordinary hikes some of the software professionals have got in recent times.

Well, just like on Sensex, there are different opinions on whether this boom is here to last and when will the slide down begin. I happen to have an opinion as well :-) It is obviously very tough to predict anything in a sector such as this even for so-called experts who are tracking everything from the global economy, earnings & spending trends, SEZ plans across cities, infrastructure projects, consumer confidence and so on. Let me state that what I am about to write is worth nothing ... it is just an opinion of a person who is not even tracking anything relevant :-)

In my opinion, the real estate in Bangalore, though a little expensive, is actually a better buy for an investor than one in cities like Mumbai & Delhi. My opinion is based on 2 facts -

• P/E Ratio
• Demographics

Let me elaborate on these two points now -

P/E Ratio:

For those who don't know P/E refers to the Price to Earnings Ratio and is very commonly used in the stock market to pick the right stocks. For real estate sector, price is the buy price of a property and earnings in the annual income that you can potentially get out of the same. A low P/E ratio in most cases indicates a potential good buy and a high P/E ratio indicates an expensive property.

About a year year back, Bangalore, by this parameter, was an excellent buy. You could buy an excellent 2BHK apartment for 30 lakhs and you could expect a monthly rent of around 10K which amounts to a P/E of only 25. The situation today is a little different and a little more expensive. An excellent 2BHK would cost you around 45 lakhs and a 3BHK around 65 lakhs (service tax & VAT have added to the cost as well) but the rents you would expect remain the same - around 10K and 15K for a 2BHK and a 3BHK respectively. This amounts to a P/E of around 35 which is high but again not too bad, if you manage to find a tenant within a few months. But, this definitely indicates there is no room for prices to grow in the near term.

Let us compare this to Delhi/Gurgaon/Noida where a very good 2BHK partment will cost around 45 lakhs but the rent that you would get will be around 7K making it a P/E of over 50. That is sure shot expensive and clearly indicates that there is not enough demand to justify such a high price.

To summarize, Bangalore is definitely a little expensive today. I don't see the demand diminishing in near future (I will explain why in my next point) and hence if the prices remain where they are or actually slide a little bit, you will get a handsome return on your investment. If you plan to buy one to sell again in a year or two, this is not a good time to buy. I do not see prices rising significantly in the near future but I definitely do not see a major slide from the current levels as well.

Demogrpahics:

The average consumer in the real estate sector in Bangalore is an IT professional who has high disposable income and is most likely not even married. He is today sharing an apartment with a couple of his friends and is almost sure to either move into a separate apartment of his own or on rent in 1-3 years after getting married (unless ofcourse Bangalore traffic drives him away to Chennai or Hyderabad). Banks are willing to approve his loan and he is definitely capable of re-paying the same in 15-20 years.

This is the reason why I do not see the demand going down significantly in near future. Ofcourse, the Indian IT industry cannot grow (in terms of number of employees) at the rate it currently is and once the current population grows a little old, this demand is bound to come down but that is at least a good 5 years from now in my opinion, if not later.

Last but not the least, if you are in Bangalore and plan to buy a house to live in, don't care for what experts say and just go for it as the prices will always rise in the long run and the earnings in this case is anyways always zero :-) It is not very easy to time the market and today is always gonna be worse than yesterday ...

:PM

A few good books ..

In one of my earlier posts titled "The Master Keys", I had listed some of the things one should definitely do. I had also mentioned that the irony is that I myself don't engage in all the "recommended" activities. One of such activities is "Reading good stuff".

Frankly, I never had the time; probably because I never had the interest or the patience :-) Well, I have changed to some extent and for the last year or so, I have managed to read quite a few books. The good part is that I have enjoyed reading most of them. So, for those of you who are still struggling to start, you can do it too. Without wasintg any further time or real estate on this html page, let me list down some of the books that I would definitely recommend to you all -

• The World Is Flat - This one from Thomas L Friedman is a must read for folks into IT. It was good to read someone talk about the importance of China and India in the overall global economy. Some of the real world examples on the world flateners especially WalMart & UPS were too cool.
• Wings Of Fire - I like books that are less than 300 pages because I still don't have patience to go through a really long book (I really struggled to complete the one on top). This one is an autobiography of APJ Abdul Kalam penned down by Arun Tiwari. It was interesting in parts and inspirational over all. If I have to take back something from this book, it would be the fact that inspite of his modest background and a lot of failures early on in his career, Abdul Kalam really went on to achieve great heights.
• The Greatness Guide - This one and a few others by Robin Sharma like the Leadership Wisdom are excellent ones. I still haven't read the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, but I was totally impressed with whatever I read so far. I liked this book because it is not too verbose and is very neatly organized into 101 chapters, some of which are absolutely "must-read".
• Freakonomics - This one from Levitt and Dubner is again an excellent one. Just about 200 pages and a lot of data related to some of the real world problems and perceptions. It is more of a human behaviour & perception book rather than an economics one so don't get scared away by the title. Some of the data & analysis presented in this book is just too good.
• Beginning Algorithms - This one by James Ross & Simon Harris has to be one of the best written books related to computer science in my opinion (disclaimer: all I have read so far is some text books during my under grad and grad school and some books on programming languages). Agreed the focus on JUnit tests is a little too much and not useful for many of us, but the way it explains the data structures & related algorithms makes it a must-read for every software programmer. And by the way, the example code is in Java.

If you happen to read this post and in turn want to recommend some books to me, please do that. Bye for now and happy reading ..

:PM

More Cricket? Redirecting ...

Since cricket is a my favourite sport and the world cup is on, I realized that it may be worthwhile to start a new blog dedicated to the cricket world cup.

Here is the link to my world cup dairy: http://kriketworldcup.blogspot.com

Cheers
:PM

Forecast Change ...

I first had the title of this post as "Change in Predictions .." but having worked in a supply chain company for quite a while, I changed it to "Forecast Change ..". I know that was unnecessary information and hence let me jump straightaway into the cricket field.

This post is an addendum to my earlier one .. with Akhtar, Asif & Razzak ruled out, I am forced to downgrade my ratings on Pakistan. All three are match winners .. and I especially rate Razzak very high. Instead of Pakistan now, I feel Kiwis would be there in the semi-finals alongwith India, WI & Sri Lanka. Kiwis must surely be on a high after amazing chases against Australians and their middle order, especially, seems to be rock solid now. As for the finals, it wil be Apna India Vs WI/NZ.

Before switching back to work, I will take your permission to make a change to my playing eleven as well. I'll play Munaf instead of Pathan and bring Pathan in as an all-rounder only if Sehwag fails in the first 2 games. This is considering Pathan did not do so well in the last domestic game he played ..

Thats it for now .. have a good day! Will be back with something different next time ..

:PM

Cricket World Cup ..

I am back after a real long gap and this time with views on one of my interest areas - Cricket. The world cup is starting in a month's time and I personally feel this will be one of the most exciting editions simply because almost all the test playing nations have very good teams and it is practically impossible to put your money on any one team. It will surely be one heck of a tournament and I can't wait for it to get started ..

Now I would just use this space to list down my playing eleven for India and also the strategy that the Indian team should adopt. My eleven (in the batting order) would be -

1. Robin Uthappa
2. Saurav Ganguly
3. Rahul Dravid
4. Sachin Tendulkar
5. Yuvraj Singh
6. Virender Sehwag
7. Mahindra Singh Dhoni
8. Irfan Pathan
9. Ajit Agarkar
10. Zaheer Khan
11. Anil Kumble

Coming to the strategy, here are a few points -

• Knowing the Carrebean pitches, I would have Tendulkar, Sehwag & Yuvraj bowl at least 15 overs between them, thus eliminating the need for a specialist 5th bowler in the playing eleven.
• Unless Kumble gets injured or really loses his touch, I would always play him ahead of Bhajji. And I will never play them both in a game.
• I would open my bowling attack with Irfan & Zaheer since it is tough to swing the white ball after 10 overs or so. It may not be a bad idea to have Agarkar open as well instead of Zaheer. Now Zaheer is my No. 1 bowler but he can deliver even if he doesn't oepn teh attack.
• Munaf & Sreesanth are very good too and can be brought in if others flop.
• In case Uthappa fails in more than one game, have Sehwag open the innings and play an additional bowler in this case.
• Have Agarkar, Zaheer & Tendulkar bowl in the slog overs (avoid Pathan & Sreesanth at any cost).

Now coming to predictions, I feel WI, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and India will make it to the semis and either India or Pakistan will lift the Cup !!

Thats it for now .. signing off ..

:PM