Books I’ve liked: Personal finance, investing & entrepreneurship

Every now and then, a friend asks me for a book recommendation, especially on personal finance, entrepreneurship and investing. Not because am an investing guru (which I am not), but because I read a ton of them!

I thought I will note it down here as well.

All these are books that I have read and liked a lot.

Few like One up on Wall street gave me the confidence that I too can be an investor in the stock market, which until then was crocodile infested space to me. Few like Intelligent Investor have been a huge huge help on almost everything finance. Few like Where are the customers yachts? changed my opinion on the stock market quite abruptly and changed my style of investing drastically.

And yet, few like Richest man in Babylon made me realize that simplicity and a principled method matters. A few like Extraordinary popular delusions helped me stay away from making costly mistakes.

Perhaps, there have been a few that have led me astray as well. Rich dad poor dad? Could be!

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Responsible consumption

Am back from attending the 3 day JLR NTP (Naturalist Training Program) at the Bannerghatta national park, conducted by JLR’s Chief Naturalist, Karthikeyan.

It is an amazing program (and Karthikeyan is a super-fantastic teacher) and I am extremely happy that I attended it. A long pending wish got done in my bucket-list.

During the program, one of the discussions was about how much effort actually goes into food production and how we trivialize it into simply idli and sambar.  We often do not realize how intricate and inter-connected things are in our lives.

We take for granted, the plate of rice and often end up wasting quite a bit. There’s so much that goes into the process to enable that plate on our table.

We pay for it. We pay in paper currency. Why bother with trivial data? Why care about some farmer’s hard work? Or about the involvement of nature in it? Or the time it takes to grow it?

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Run fast to reach late

I have started running recently.

It’s been 3 weeks now and makes me feel good.

In the last 2 weeks, I used to do 10 laps in the ground near my home in about 28 minutes usually, a distance of around 4.6Kms.

Yesterday, since I entered the 3rd week, I thought I will push myself a bit more. So I tried to run just a wee bit faster.

To my surprise, it took me longer than my usual sub-28 minutes.

It took 30 minutes.  I had slowed down during the latter part a bit.

That made me think.

• Slow and steady may be boring. But is still a good strategy.
• Fast growth is not the answer to building a good business / financial portfolio / lifestyle.
• Focus on quality. Maintain priorities. Focus on goals, not on reaching fast.
• Don’t sweep things under the carpet in your race to pace it out.
• Think long term though few of them may be counter productive in the short term.

It is especially important that I keep these things in mind given my current situation. Gave up my job, too many experiments, lot of ideas, lack of execution knowledge, what-next situation, etc.

A tale of two cooker companies

A few days back a guy knocked on my door.

‘Saar, Prestige cooker repair & service maadbeka?’, he asked. (Sir, do you want to repair / service Prestige cookers?).

We didn’t utilize his service. But it immediately struck me how strong a brand Prestige was. I forgot all about it soon.

After quitting my job, I’ve been thinking of restructuring my equity portfolio. I thought I will take a look at a few consumer oriented brands like Asian Paints. Immediately, Prestige came into mind. So I took a look at the cooker industry.

And here’s what I noted.

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The economics of running a rental business (updated)

You might know already that I run Tapprs, an online photography & travel equipment rental place.

Thought I will share my view of the economics of running such a business, at least at a small scale such as it is now.  Tapprs is still in the validation phase, but the numbers shown here should be relevant even if scaled up. All numbers are actuals, except for revenue.

Disclaimer: I have no accounting background and there could be mistakes on my part. Please do point it out if you find any.

Initial funding:

Assume that the operations began on June 1.

As the sole owner, I put in Rs 1 lakh as equity capital. This is free money (don’t have to pay interest on it). And then I lend Rs 2lakh to the business from my pocket which I charge an interest of 12% annually (realistically, no one would lend to such a business without collateral and interest rates will be much higher).  That means Tapprs would have an interest payout of Rs 24000 every year on it until paid back.

Use of funds:

Tapprs needs to start. For which, I do these transactions on June 1.

So, at the end of the day, my balance sheet looks like

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