Creating value

Story 1:

How to sell off a dead donkey

A city boy, Kenny, moved to the country and bought a donkey from an old farmer for $100.00. The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day. The next day the farmer drove up and said, "Sorry son, but I have some bad news, the donkey died last night."

Kenny replied: "Well then, just give me my money back."

The farmer said: "Can't do that. I went and spent it already."

Kenny said: "OK then, just unload the donkey.."

The farmer asked: "What ya gonna do with him?"

Kenny: "I'm going to raffle him off." (Note: To raffle is to sell a thing by lottery - draw lot - to a group of people each paying the same amount for a ticket)

Farmer: "You can't raffle off a dead donkey!"

Kenny: "Sure I can. Watch me. I just won't tell anybody he's dead."

A month later the farmer met up with Kenny and asked, "What happened with that dead donkey?" Kenny: "I raffled him off. I sold 500 tickets at two dollars apiece and made a profit of $898.00."

Farmer: "Didn't anyone complain?"

Kenny: "Just the guy who won. So I gave him back his two dollars."

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Story 2:

A company has a debt of say 100 units and equity of 100. It splits up the company into 5 companies: 4 are debtless and the other takes all the debt. The one with excess debt shuts down and the other 4 companies take on more debt, do an IPO and prosper. Result: Tremendous value created for shareholders!

Moral: How many of you guys participated in things (eg:smsed to tv serials) thinking things are straight forward and were ignorant?

How come fooling people seems to be a very sustainable source of value creation?

I leave it to you to think it over...

Reality shows and all that cow dung

The latest(or maybe not THE latest) anti reformist step taken by the govt. of India is that courier companies should not handle and transport couriers below a certain weight. The most obvious winner in this case is India Post. It is not hard to fathom why the govt. is doing this. The number of workers working in the postal department is only slightly more or less than that were working in the 90's. Then the age of mobile telephony and internet and now broadband internet at almost every high end and middle class home. Those were the days of Surabhi, when Siddarth Das and Renuka Sahane towards the end of the episode used to say the number of postcards received every week for their contest to win a trip(abroad or in India, I can't remember). These postcards were mainly from people in the middle class who used to buy the postcard, write down the answer and the address, go to the post box to post it and try to win something for themelves. And now, the days of reality shows, where millions of namooneys watch the hyped up shows which are dragged like tom's tongue in Tom and Jerry. They desperately try to bring a climax to the result situation which can be otherwise done casually and pleasantly. And all the namooneys who watch it sitting at their house supposedly have a big reason to watch the show(or even without a reason). These people have after all spent Rs.6 per sms to vote the candidate who they like based on the state they are from, their beauty, and whatever else their criteria. And that too when they have nothing in the world to win from messaging. This is the reason mobile telephone companies and advertising companies are raking in the moolah, whereas the Indian public is wasting their double moolah(money + time). If 1990's tv shows of India showed the middle classes' finese with great variety of prime time television, the 2000s are the age of sms crazy psychos whose only alternate adventurous life to the day to day life is the reality shows.