Sales pressure

I visited my bank for some work a few days ago and someone accosted me trying to sell me some mutual fund investment. I politely declined. Today, I received a call from someone else in my branch who wished to speak with me about investment opportunities. Needless to say, the conversation was starting to veer towards this same fund. If I dig a little deeper, I might find that this fund is focused on the 'transportation' sector and I suspect airlines fall squarely within the transport sector.

One would think that by now, my relationship manager at my bank would know that I am not interested in investing in anything but index funds at least for the time being.

However, just like a Smith & Wesson beats four aces, a sales target beats relationships.

Goin' 'lectric

India has witnessed a leapfrogging of technology at least once with our Mobile Telephony revolution skipping the landline entirely for most of the nation. We might be staring at another such opportunity vis-a-vis fossil fuels and clean energy. For myriad reasons, India has been unable to deliver grid power to a large percentage of the population. With Solar power and LED bulbs and a small battery, we can perhaps expend with the cost, and corruption, involved in stringing a lot of aluminium across a lot of steel.

With Solar Photo Voltaic Cells becoming ever more efficient and Lithium-ion batteries evolving at the rate they are, we are facing for the first time ever, the possibility that power generation and consumption do not need to be concurrent. If you have not yet watched Elon Musk speak at the launch of the Tesla Powerwall, you might want to do so now.

With Tesla declaring some interest in setting up a Gigafactory in India for manufacture of batteries, all it might take is a little nudge for us to be able to drop the shackles of fossil fuels entirely.