Friday, September 20, 2019

Food for thought!

Recently when the Finance Minister, Ms. Nirmala Sitharaman, mentioned certain uncanny statistics like drop in car sales due to millennials not buying cars any more, Logistics made simple and easy reducing the truck business sizeably, NBFC companies shrinking due to change in lease models, etc., the industry and the media ridiculed her for her lack of business and industry knowledge.

Even Industry Captains like Anand Mahindra went overboard to ridicule her utterances.

But little did the media and of course industry, too, realise that it was high time that Indian businesses had a deep examination of their business models.

A global survey and research by a German firm which elaborately covered India has indicated twenty major risks to global financing markets arising due to impending global recession and particularly how it will impact India in the medium and long term.

The survey-cum-research bluntly puts across that unless Indian businesses change their tacks and business models, many will perish soon.

Here are the twenty risks:-

 1. Most people will stop buying cars in a decade-and-a-half. A prediction that 95% of all US
     passenger miles traveled will be addressed by fleets, not individuals, by 2030.

 2. People will increase the renting of assets (over buying these) because they will never be sure
     where they would be living a few years hence.

 3. The cost of commute will become the 'next telecom' virtually free, that is.

 4. Most cars will be made from recycled steel, as a result of which, ore companies will go belly-
     up.

 5. The large steel sector debt will not be able to be returned to banks.

 6. Electric cars, with around 18 moving parts compared with 10,000 - 12,000 for the usual 
     petrol-driven variety, would accelerate the death of the automobile components industry.

 7. The demise of the auto component industry will affect the global alloys steel sector,
     including ore and ferroalloys.

 8. Oil behemoths will not be able to repay their loans if oil consumption declined. Elimination
     unlikely.

 9. Electric vehicles will come with an unlimited warranty. This means that after you once buy a
     vehicle, you would not need to buy another, ever.

10. Oil-based economies (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Russia, Nigeria etc) will go into a crisis.

11. Some of the funding coming out of these Oil Producing Countries (read what you will into
      this) will disappear and the world will become a more peaceful place.

12. Cash rich automotive lubricant companies will discover there is nothing to really lubricate.

13. 3D printing will even out the wage arbitage between developed and developing nations.

14. Robotisation (Artificial Intelligence) will clean out jobs (as it has in the banking sector, where
      the business has grown disproportionately faster than recruitment).

15. A number of skills will become obsolete. Microsurgery, for instance, because a robot will do it
      better.

16. Renewable energy will kick-start a long-term coal decline.

17. Large coal behemoths employing thousands will file for bankruptcy. In fact, it's already
      happening.

18. Banks will become a concept rather than a place, banks will become more about systems
      than people.

19. The world will move towards deflation arising out of an abundance of money and relatively
      limited spending.

20. The new retirement age will become 50 years (on an average).


Tailpiece.

It was another quiet day where the rains had dwindled down to a few drizzles. 

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