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Big Cyber Challenge to Small Businesses

  The number of startups and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) are growing in India. They contribute considerably to the Indian GDP. They will play a crucial role in making Bharat a $5 trillion economy in the near future. They face many challenges to making their businesses sustainable and profitable. Cyber threats have emerged as one of the significant threats for big corporations as well as MSEMs. Cyber threats remain similar for big corporations as well as MSMEs. This is because both kinds of organizations use technology to capture, process and store sensitive data and information. This data includes financial data, customer data, intellectual property (IP), transactional data, and business emails. Major cyber threats to MSMEs and startups are spam and phishing attacks, ransomware attacks, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, identity theft, data theft, and IP theft. A recent report by the Cyber Peace Foundation revealed that 43% of cyberattacks target MSMEs and
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Importance of Documentation in Start Up Investing

Pranam According to INC42 , the Indian start-ups have raised about $42 Billion in 2021 spread over 1584 deals, the same was $25 Billion in 2022 spread over 1517 deals . However, the same between the period I Jan 2023 till 21 March 2023 was $3 Billion spread over 3 deals. As per Tracxn Indian Start-ups raised a mere $5.46 billion in the first SIX months of 2023 as compared to $17.1 billion during the first SIX months of 2022 i.e a substantial decline of 68%. There are many reasons for this decline , however this post is not for understanding the reasons for such a decline . In this post I will like to highlight the documentations that goes with such Startup Funding Deals. All said and done, the start-up ecosystem is here to stay as the Government of the day is also promoting the same or atleast that is what is being said.  The investors are willing to set aside a part of their corpus to invest in this HIGH RISK asset class.  And accelerators and angel funds have made such a investing po
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Zero Percent Finance - Really ?

Pranam Our elders taught us to spend less and save more .But now, we are taught spend more as it will help our producers , sellers , Banks and NBFC's  and hence the economy. Now to sell the sellers come up with innovative ( or cheating ) ideas one such idea being Zero Percent Finance (ZPF) . Aisa kabhi hota hai kya ? .  The best economic lesson is "Caveat Emptor" i,e "Let the Buyer Beware." Let us dissect this ZPF myth with an example. Suppose that Ramesh want's to buy a AC from a store the price being Rs.48000 with a cash discount of Rs.4000. However the budget of Ramesh is Rs.35000 only and hence he says no .The smart sales executive ( not salesman) counsels him and says  "at our shop we will not allow money to come in between you and your dreams as we provide ZPF" . He says you just need to pay Rs.1000 processing fee and Rs.16,000 i.e 4 months EMI in advance and rest you can pay in installments .Ramesh praises the sales executive buys the AC a
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Markets - Machine to transfer the money to Patient from Impatient - A Brief Story of Harshadbhai's Favorite ACC

 Pranam In this post, I have tried to find out what would have happened to investment of the person who might have invested in ACC at its highest during Harshad Mehta times , but would have been holding the stock till now. I understand most of the people who might have invested @ Rs.10,000 the highest price of ACC in June 1992 would have sold the share as that is what most of us will do in such a chaotic environment . The following chart is self explanatory -  Points to be noted -  1.The Base price of one share of ACC which was Rs.10,000 at its peak of 1992 is now Rs.80,680.6 i.e approximately 8X 2. The CAGR returns including dividends till December 2022 is 7.7% . 3. Rs.10,00,000 invested in June 1992 ( the most stupid decision) is now Rs.92,38,080 i.e 9X  In many documents  it is clarified that based on the research carried out by Harshadbhai and his team , they started purchasing the shares of ACC from a level of Rs.300/- and effected most of the purchases by Rs.3000/-. The stock the
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12 Native Gujarati Advice for Share Markets

This is the advice of Market Veteran NILESH SHAH, Group President and MD, Kotak Mahindra AMC published by Value Research . I did my articleship at Hamam Street, behind the BSE Tower, three decades back. I was attracted to the stock markets, like my colleagues, to make quick money. In those days, the stock market was the Wild West, with terms like ‘company circle buying’, ‘vandho’ (dispute), ‘payment crisis’, ‘galo’ (gap/difference), ‘patavat’ (settlement), ‘bad delivery’, etc. Might was right. Bulls and bears were making money and retail investors like me were getting slaughtered.  Luck guided me to an old sub-broker wearing traditional dagla (overcoat). I am happy to narrate his advice, in native Gujarati, which has helped me immensely over the years in managing money.  1.While we do Laxmi Pujan on Dalal Street every Diwali, you need to worship Sarasvati Maa every day. Knowledge and wisdom are critical to making money in the stock market.  2. Investment is about common sense, which is
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What is Mezzanine finance?

Q. What do promising companies do when they have already exhausted standard bank finance and are already listed on the exchange, but still have some inadequacy of finance to fund their expansion or attractive acquisition venture in a very short period of time ? Ans: Such companies need some quick money to adjust their cash flows and fill that important gap to pursue their growth strategies and goals. At such times, mezzanine finance comes in as a handy option. Let's take a look at this increasingly useful finance option, study its structure and understand its features from the lender's as well as the borrower's perspective. Mezzanine finance has the characteristics of both debt and equity capital and is essentially a mix of both. This type of financing is usually availed by companies which have either expansion or restructuring plans and acquisition goals. It can be in the form of subordinated debt which is referred to as mezzanine debt or in the form of equity preferred
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Why Do Financial Plans Fail?

  Note:   Some content of this article has been taken from the book  11 principles to achieve financial freedom - by Nandish Desai   and You were born rich - By Bob Proctor To achieve any goal in life the following three things are a MUST  1.Meticulous Planning detailing what to do, when to do , how to do , who will do what while taking into consideration various scenarios, constraints, available resources ets  2.Super Execution of the plan so as to achieve the planned impact in planned areas within the planned time, with the available resources AND  3.Continuous monitoring of the plan so as to know where have we reached , what is changed, what needs to be changed and so on. Same thing is applicable to financial plan also. Now a days every now and then we keep on reading and hearing in television, Youtube, newspaper, magazines about why financial plan is a need of the day and not a luxury. So, at some point in our life we create our own financial plan either by oneself or by getting a
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