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Dear Financial Voice Reader, I write to you having returned from Washington DC. What is it about Americans when it comes to pitching? They just wipe the floor with everyone else. I’ve been listening to business pitches for over a decade now, from US, to China, India, and even Malaysia and Thailand – let alone from Britain. Having just got back from the States I can tell you they are hands down the best. And there is no excuse for the others being so poor at it. After all, it’s only the entrepreneurial dream of your own business you’re flushing away by horrible pitching. So what do the Americans do so right, and what can the rest of the world find online to help them never make poor pitching mistakes again? First, the Americans know the answers to obvious questions – what will be your turnover? What’s your profit margin? How have you come to the valuation of your company? Will you need future funding or is this it? And the answer to ‘why do you need my money?’ is not ‘for marketing spend’. Second, the Americans solve problems, they do not provide solutions looking for a problem. They start with ‘wouldn’t it be great if…’ or ‘isn’t it a pain when….’ Not ‘I used to work in Multinationalhorrible corp’. I’ve found at pitching sessions, Indians start off with their life stories – actually the life stories of their grandparents. By the time they get to their product, times already up…or I’m sleeping. The Malaysians and Thai are just too centred on their tiny domestic markets. The Americans are aiming at global markets on day one. They want to rule the world, not just their neighbourhood. The Chinese, well frankly unless from Hong Kong, invariably drone on at me for about 2 hours in a 600 slide presentation in Mandarin – this actually only happened a few times – but the memory is painful I fear returning to Shanghai or Beijing. Sure they make iPhones, but that’s for the American entrepreneur. The Brits – once global rulers, now just embarrassed to pitch. They’re almost apologising – or at the other extreme aping American’s without being authentic. And they rarely know the answer to ‘how did you come up with wanting £500,000 for 10% of your company’. If you can’t value your company, why should anyone give you money? It’s money. You can’t seem to value it. And there is no excuse for poor pathetic performance from others. To improve your pitching and get what investors are after here are the key essentials you need to visit online: First, check out Angel List (angel.co) – see who’s getting funding and how slick their pitches look. Copy that. Second, have a look on Slideshare at presentations from some of the best VCs in the world telling you what you should have in your pitch. Come on, a tutorial from Elon Musk – that’s got to be worth 30 minutes of anybody’s time. Third, watch Shark Tank. Not Dragon’s Den. It’s on YouTube – I don’t care where you are in the world you have no excuse for not knowing how to pitch – unless you think YouTube is purely for watching dogs do backflips. It’s an education tool the likes of which we’ve never seen. You’ve never had tutorials from Bill Gates and Richard Branson – but most people want to watch an angry cat instead. Four, check out the free courses on Udemy.com – the online education site. There are some amazing experts. Finally – look at the websites of the largest Venture Capital firms and Angel groups – they give amazing guidance – because they too are afraid of the poor pitch. Alpesh Patel Alpesh is the senior most member of a UK Government team which has brought to the UK entrepreneur led companies worth $1billion+ over the past decade as part of the UKTI Global Entrepreneur Programme. He runs a Private Equity fund from the UK. Asian Voice readers get 33% off my FX online training course: www.udemy.com/tradefx4profit (coupon code: AsianVoice1)
www.abplgroup.com - Asian Voice 7th February 2015
India's economic growth revised up by almost 50%
India's economy grew almost 50 per cent faster in 2013/14 than earlier thought, the government said after changing a formula, a reminder of the challenges that unreliable statistics present to Indian policy makers. In the year leading up to the elections that brought Prime Minister Narendra Modi to power last May, the economy grew 6.9 per cent, not the 4.7 per cent reported earlier, chief statistician TCA Anant told reporters. Modi's campaign succeeded partly because of the widespread feeling that his predecessors from the Congress party had plunged the economy into the country's longest deceleration in growth in a generation. The revised formula, showing a faster recovery, includes under-represented and informal sectors as well as items such as smartphones and LED tel-
evision sets in gross domestic product. That could boost India's growth figure in the year ending in March 2015, which the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has projected to be around 5.5 per cent. Some in government predict the change will help bring down the fiscal deficit as a share of gross domestic product, making it easier for Modi to trim the gap to a seven-year low of 4.1 per cent in the year to March despite a shortfall in revenue. However, Anant said
the overall size of India's $1.8 trillion economy had not changed enough to shift the ratio significantly, adding: "Our ranking in GDP terms will not change as the size of economy has almost remained the same." The new methodology moves India more in line with global standards by measuring the economy at market prices, and by tracking consumer rather than wholesale inflation. "This will help lower market distortions and give better representation to
the manufacturing sector," said Soumya Kanti Ghosh, chief economic adviser at State Bank of India. But the frequent GDP revisions and other deficient data are a headache for economic planners. Among the worst offenders are the volatile index for industrial production and the jobless numbers, seen as very unrepresentative. The latest GDP revision is part of a change to the method of calculating national accounts that happens every five years. "It is a problem for the government and economists who are trying to understand the exact situation," said D.H. Pai Panandiker, president of RPG Foundation, an economic policy group in New Delhi. "It is even a problem for the RBI, that doesn't have a full view about how the economy is performing."
performers. Goldman Sachs, which is the asset manager of the fund, is set to issue the new ETF units before the end of the fiscal year on March 31, the source said. "We have the finance ministry's go-ahead and are working out the final details," the source, who is directly involved in proceedings said. The government has set a target of $10 billion to be raised by selling government-held shares, in order to trim the
fiscal deficit to a sevenyear low by the end of March. Expanding the Central Public Sector Enterprise (CPSE) ETF would be a welcome lift. The ETF comprises 10 stocks, mixing heavyweights such as Coal India Ltd and Oil & Natural Gas Corporation Ltd with laggards such as Bharat Electronics Ltd and Engineers India Ltd. The unit value of the fund has increased 38.8 per cent since its launch last March, outperforming a strong 30.6 per cent rise in the NSE index during the same period. To date, the current government has raised $3.9 billion out of its $10 billion target, most of it coming from last week's
record offering of a 10 per cent equity stake in staterun Coal India. However, plans for a second exchange traded fund announced last year have been put on hold, the source added. The fund was to have been made up of government-held minority shares in nonstate firms including ITC, Larsen & Toubro and Axis Bank. Finance ministry officials declined to comment but said that the government was considering all options to meet its target. "We are working on many issues," Aradhana Johri, secretary in-charge of the government's disinvestment programme, had said after the sale of Coal India shares.
As a result, the new Maharaja is a far departure from the mascot debuted in 1946. Sporting a spiked hairstyle and white sneakers, the only similarity to the previous Maharaja is the trademark moustache. Air India officials plan on showcasing
the new Maharaja across 27 different setting, reflecting different destinations the airline serves and portraying a star member of the Indian cricket team. “The new Maharajah is aligned with the modern times and with the new AI which is also trying to cut flab to become a lean commercial entity,” an Air India representative said. “The Maharajah now has a leaner, young, sporty and
more dynamic look.” While the update was made to reflect India as a modern nation, many have criticized the new look. According to Quartz, the more barbed comments on Twitter compare the new Maharaja to a “New York cab driver,” while an editorial published by 'The Economic Times' claims the new Maharaja could “be seen as evidence of the lumbering airline’s earnestness to embark on a radical weight reduction exercise, if not bariatric surgery, just yet.”
India to raise Rs 50 bn through exchange traded fund sale before March end
India plans to raise Rs 50 billion ($ 809 million) by selling additional units of a fund made up of shares in public sector companies, a move which would boost government efforts to trim its deficit. The previous government had set up the exchange traded fund (ETF) last year as a way of selling shares in 10 stateowned companies. It raised Rs 30 billion in an oversubscribed offering as investors welcomed access to a basket of firms. The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, elected last May, hopes to again tap appetite for a fund that has outperformed the Indian market, already one of Asia's strongest
Air India’s Maharaja gets a makeover
After nearly 60 years as the official mascot of Air India, the Maharaja is trading in his regal robes and turban for jeans and a smartphone. The update in the mascot’s look was spearheaded by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who took office in 2014. In meeting with the leadership of Air India, one of the first assignments Modi handed down to the airline was updating the look of the Maharaja. Modi asked for the mascot to reflect the “aam addimi” - the common man.