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Not now, thanksSeetharaman is a deputy editor at The Ken. Starting out as a business journalist in 2008, he has written about energy, climate change, retail, banking, and technology. He has worked with Business Today, a fortnightly, and the Sunday edition of The Economic Times.
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Top Comments by Seetharaman G
How Indigo ran out of pilots—gradually, then suddenly
Thanks for your feedback, Ravi! But I have to disagree here, and I can assure you no one is sleeping at the wheel at The Ken :) Your assertion is similar to asking if film critics can ever make a film or if business journalists can run a company even for a day. The reasoning is flawed. Plus, the word "bully" is not something the writer used but is instead in a quote by a pilot. I don't know what you mean by "post-hoc rationalizations", but if you're referring to an account of how a big event came to be, after it happens, then that's part of journalism, and that's exactly what we have done here. Unlike mainstream news organisations, we don't hold a brief for anyone. We just follow the story.
Seetharaman G The Ken, Deputy Editor
How Indigo ran out of pilots—gradually, then suddenly
Fully agree with you, Anand, that we should have had a story earlier. But there were a lot of moving parts, and we just didn't want to add to the noise. We wanted to be sure we had a story worth telling. But yes, we will be faster.
Seetharaman G The Ken, Deputy Editor
The Jane Street bug in Nuvama’s money machine
Sorry, Abe, we have fixed it. Thanks for pointing it out!
Seetharaman G The Ken, Deputy Editor
Godrej Consumer’s Sudhir Sitapati on selling to India's top 20% during a demand slump
I'm glad you found it useful, Chinmay. Good luck with your brand!
Seetharaman G The Ken, Deputy Editor
Godrej Consumer’s Sudhir Sitapati on selling to India's top 20% during a demand slump
I'm not sure that a "significant" percentage of households with a smart TV have a Youtube subscription, Ashith. If I do find data on this, I'll share it with you.
Seetharaman G The Ken, Deputy Editor
360 One wrote the wealth-management playbook. Now it is learning a hard lesson
Apologies, Rajeev! We have fixed it.
Seetharaman G The Ken, Deputy Editor
Indigo’s market value is soaring. So is passengers’ fury
Indigo is hardly "cheap", Abhinaw. It's supposed to be a low-cost carrier, but its tickets often cost no less than, say, Air India's. I guess Indigo has been able to do this because of its dominance. What's highly efficient for a company need not necessarily lead to a great customer experience.
Seetharaman G The Ken, Deputy Editor
VCs and techies are turning India into a nation of hired hands
This is my point, too, Naveen. Thanks for articulating it well. It's quite scary that doing food and grocery deliveries is millions' best shot at a livelihood in a country that may take decades, if at all, to break out of its middle-income status.
Seetharaman G The Ken, Deputy Editor
VCs and techies are turning India into a nation of hired hands
Srikanth, the piece began with empathy for gig workers and their conditions. As a country, we grossly underpay those who do our chores or fix our homes. It’s not that tech companies have rectified that by ensuring them a far higher income, taking it closer to what they deserve. That’ll throw their financials out of whack, partly because the consumer isn’t going to pay that much. These companies have merely made it easier for us to find the same old cheap service. And there’s a difference between a college kid flipping burgers and someone’s livelihood being linked to relentless 10-min deliveries. Finally, criticisms of the piece, which we welcome, seem to belong in the “something is better than nothing” camp. We did admit that the young don’t have too many options, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we celebrate that “something”.
Seetharaman G The Ken, Deputy Editor
Swiggy is at the mercy of Zomato for its IPO
Food delivery has been profitable for a few quarters now, Sameer. Quick commerce is more attractive for two reasons: grocery is a much larger market than food delivery and has higher order frequency.
Seetharaman G The Ken, Deputy Editor
What’s Aditya Birla Fashion without brands like Allen Solly and Louis Philippe?
Hi, Kshitij, having strong brands is one thing and being able to run large retail stores is another. They can sell their brands through small, exclusive outlets or thousands of multi-brand stores, which they have been doing well for years. But until they bought Pantaloons, they'd had no experience running such stores, which partly explains the flip-flops in strategy in the initial years.
Seetharaman G The Ken, Deputy Editor
Campus shoes beat Puma and wowed investors. Then came the troubles
No, there's no typo. While Abros' growth is incredible, the people behind Abros are not new to footwear. The brand may be very young, but one of its owners has been a contract manufacturer and supplier of soles to some of the biggest footwear brands. And Pramod Sharma, thanks to his Campus stint, knows what scaling a sneaker brand takes. Having said that, as the second chart indicates, Abros only has half the profit margins as Campus. But that isn't surprising for a new entrant.
Seetharaman G The Ken, Deputy Editor
Why is Ola Electric in such a hurry to build its gigafactory?
Hi, Arun, thanks for the feedback! I'll have to disagree with you here. We have said in the story Ola has a track record of finishing large projects sooner than peers, but that comes with a cost. There's data to back up that claim. Also, we're certainly not "critical of everything," as you say. Our recent stories on Dixon Tech, Indira IVF, and Tata Consumer talk about what, and how, these companies have done well.
Seetharaman G The Ken, Deputy Editor
Forget Taiwan's Foxconn and Pegatron. India's Dixon is the world's hottest electronics maker
Hey, Shashank, thanks for the feedback! The point of a headline is to grab the reader's attention. And what's in this header is factually correct, as we have shown with data in the story. Also, Foxconn and Pegatron are among the best-known names in the world of EMS, so it was natural for us to benchmark Dixon against them.
Seetharaman G The Ken, Deputy Editor
Why a tech giant is more relieved than happy as India lifts ban on its mobile game
Hi, Kannan, thanks for your feedback! The objective of a headline is to pique the reader's curiosity. It should make the reader want to read the story even if it's not a subject they would otherwise be interested in. The opposite of this is a matter-of-fact headline that doesn't do justice to the story. Of course we make sure it's not clickbait or misleading, but we believe that given the deluge of news out there, we have to earn our subscribers' attention, and a good story would be wasted if the headline wasn't interesting enough to make them want to click on it. For instance, the last headline you've mentioned is for a story of mine. The reason we didn't mention Jaipuria in the header is because, as we write in the very first paragraph of the story, he's not as well known as some other billionaires. Nor are his companies household names. Which is why we used billionaire and the different sectors he has made money off, and I don't see anything wrong with that.
Seetharaman G The Ken, Deputy Editor
The billionaire who hit pay dirt in FMCG, fast food, hospitals, and hotels
Bottling is not seen as a very profitable business globally, which is why investors were not very interested in Varun Beverages. But with Varun getting more and more territories and with the rise in volumes, the economies of scale helped improve their margins. But there are some who still believe that despite being the dominant Pepsico bottler, it's still a bottler and is dependent on Pepsico to launch new products and take advantage of emerging categories. Fast-food franchisees, on the other hand, have a lot more leeway in terms of product launches.
Seetharaman G The Ken, Deputy Editor
How Tata Consumer’s Sunil D’Souza put product launches on steroids
Hi, Harsh, listed companies usually don't make too many forward-looking statements on revenue and profits. And Tata Consumer hasn't said how many products it will launch in the next couple of years, either. But it plans to take the sales contribution of new products to 4.5-5% in FY23.
Seetharaman G The Ken, Deputy Editor
Byju’s on your résumé? Recruiters say, ‘No chance’
Thanks for pointing it out, Ritvik. We fixed it. Apologies for the error!
Seetharaman G The Ken, Deputy Editor
Reliance Retail goes from poster child for unlisted shares to cautionary tale
Thanks for your feedback, Ryan. I understand that you needed more clarity on this, but I believe it would have been beyond the scope of this story. The idea here was to talk about the absurd valuation of Reliance Retail and the implications of the recent move for the unlisted market as a whole.
Seetharaman G The Ken, Deputy Editor
Reliance Retail goes from poster child for unlisted shares to cautionary tale
Thanks, Sharad. Though we have mentioned how absurdly high the unlisted-market valuation is relative to what the independent valuers and brokerages think, I do get your point. Also, you have to remember that a big chunk of this revenue comes from Jio stores, which are not considered "core retail". Also, while Reliance seems to have paid a 50% premium over the independent valuation, going any lower would have angered investors further.
Seetharaman G The Ken, Deputy Editor
Why MRF, Nestle, and other ‘pricey’ stocks are happy being exceptions
Sorry you didn't like the piece, Swaroop. As for the SEA articles, we only share those with India subscribers that we think might be relevant to them, either because there is a regional connection or because it's a subject that's of interest to people across countries. But yes, we're quite mindful of the point you've raised. Thank you!
Seetharaman G The Ken, Deputy Editor
Why MRF, Nestle, and other ‘pricey’ stocks are happy being exceptions
Sorry you feel that way, Ramji, but I beg to differ. Capital markets are increasingly an important part of our coverage, and several of the companies on this list are of interest to a range of investors. And the takeaways in the piece – ranging from the extent of retail shareholding to volumes traded – are contrary to commonly held perceptions. And the reason we do such pieces is because they are not found in financial dailies.
Seetharaman G The Ken, Deputy Editor
How a state-run 'upstart' came to rival Tata Power as investors’ top renewables bet
Hi, you have a point. But then, one could argue that even Tata Power's green arm is not strictly comparable with NTPC's since the former has a bunch of businesses other than generation. But the analysts I spoke with told me that they find it hard to value those businesses, such as EV charging, given that the company doesn't provide a great deal of detail on them.
Seetharaman G The Ken, Deputy Editor
How Nykaa went from investor darling to tech laggard
Marketplace, Vineet. Nykaa has a marketplace in fashion, but the vertical is still very small.
Seetharaman G The Ken, Deputy Editor