Today in Tech: FIIs & Indian IT firms; Groupon CEO's farewell letter and more
Finance minister P Chidambaram's proposal to categorize foreign institutional investment and foreign direct investment based on holdings in a company has raised questions about the impact it will have on companies. I took a quick look at some of the top IT services companies listed in India. None of them have FII holding of over 10% and except in case of Mphasis, there's none which even has over 5%. Aberdeen holds about 8% in the company. Among institutional investors, LIC has over 5% stake in two of the top six.
In any case, it was interesting to look at FII investment in top Indian IT. They seem to love Indian IT, especially Infosys. Here's the graph.
If you drill it down a little more, this is what you get. In almost every top company, around 50% of the non-promoter shares are held by FIIs.
This is just another side of what Raghuram Rajan chief economic advisor said, post-budget, about the importance of channeling local savings from gold to equity market.
Here's an interesting table that shows where software industry stands in comparison to its peers in services sector
If you haven't already read Andrew Mason's memo, you must. It's refreshingly honest.
If there's one piece of wisdom that this simple pilgrim would like to impart upon you: have the courage to start with the customer. My biggest regrets are the moments that I let a lack of data override my intuition on what's best for our customers. This leadership change gives you some breathing room to break bad habits and deliver sustainable customer happiness - don't waste the opportunity!
This is not the best part of the letter. Read the full memo here.
Also of interest
- Marissa Mayer is killing telecommuting, and that’s a good thing | Venturebeat
- Remote Working: Is Creativity Lost? Discovery
- The "Interspecies Internet" Is Online, Seeking Cognitive Beings For Live Chat | Fast Company
- The interspecies internet: Diana Reiss, Peter Gabriel, Neil Gershenfeld and Vint Cerf at TED2013 | TED
- Science Can Now Create Telepathic Rats | Popular Mechanics
- Facebook, Google tech gurus to design cancer research game | Reuters
- Apple Threatened With Higher Smartphone Tax: Corporate India | Bloomberg