Intuition. Perception. Perfection.

     At the dawn of the millennium, India’s telecom sector was a different place. The customer base was small albeit growing, market penetration was low and call rates were almost outrageously high. The sector was considered to be a sunrise sector and the market, at that time, was dominated by Bharti Airtel. The company pioneered the ‘minutes factory’ business model (a volume-centric strategy) and it ruled the market in terms of customer base and revenues. In fact, Bharti was virtually unchallenged in the marketplace for several years. All that, however, changed with the arrival of Mukesh Ambani.      In 2002, Mukesh Ambani flagged off Reliance Infocomm and his newest baby went head-to-head with Bharti in a slugfest. Reliance, over the course of the next two years, slashed call rates to rock-bottom levels and tied up with handset manufacturers to launch mobile handsets that even the hoi polloi could afford. Soon enough, Reliance found itse...

     It’s true. Everybody loves Raymond. And I don’t mean Ray Barone. The subject in question is the Gautam Singhania – spearheaded company, Raymond Limited, which is one of India’s largest branded textile and garment manufacturers. At a time when several players in the textile sector are struggling to keep their heads above water, Raymond is already racing ahead in terms of both topline and bottomline numbers. The market, on its part has chosen to handsomely reward Raymond for its market-beating performance and today, its scrip virtually behaves like that of an FMCG company, rising faster than the market in a bullish phase and correcting less severely in a bearish market. Raymond constantly manages to outperform its peers and thus, it isn’t without reason that the company finds itself a cut above the rest.      Singhania has begun to focus on a strategy that gives Raymond’s brands a greater push and at the same time, boosts the company’s marg...

     For the past 4 years, India’s largest FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) company, Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) was indeed the toast of the market. Quarter after quarter, HUL clocked double-digit growth rates in terms of both turnover and net income. On the volume front, HUL didn’t disappoint the Street either and its scrip constantly outperformed those of rivals like ITC, Marico and Dabur. Most brokerage houses had strong ‘buy’ and ‘outperform’ ratings on HUL, with ambitious price targets that predicted an annual return of over 30%. For many years, HUL was indeed the undisputed darling of the stock market but like that old saying goes, all good things must come to an end. And true to that saying, Q3 of FY13 was when HUL’s time in the sun ended.      Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch parent company of HUL, has seen a slowdown in most of its developed markets in recent years and it has turned to emerging markets like India, Indonesia and Brazil ...