The Government of India (TRAI) has come up with their new tariff policy for the DTH and Cable TV operators in India. This new TRAI regulation enforces uniform pricing all across India for the paid channels or broadcaster packages. We, the consumers (subscribers), are supposed to be empowered with this new move as one just needs to pay for what is chosen. However, the reality is far from that ideal world. The monthly subscription fees of most subscribers have shot up dramatically while some channels have disappeared in many cases!

One of the main reasons behind this issue is the lack of awareness on how to optimally choose your channels or packages! This post is an attempt to make you – as a DTH or Digital Cable TV subscriber – understand what to do in order to get the most bang for your buck! At the end of this article, I am sure to save you some money on your monthly TV subscription charges.

What is the New TRAI Regulation all about?

The following list outlines the rules by TRAI which are to be complied by all broadcasters and DTH / Cable TV providers. For the sake of brevity, I am mentioning only the most important points that are applicable to most of us as consumers.

• All DTH or Cable TV providers (e.g. Tata Sky, Hathway) must provide an easy selection mechanism to their subscribers. This can be via apps, websites, manual forms etc but should help consumers choose the channels they want to watch
• All providers should at the least offer a base bundle of 100 FTA (Free To Air) SD channels, in all geographies in the country. This base package will be charged uniformly at Rs.130/- plus GST (18%) across India. This comes to Rs. 153.40 with GST
• The above base bundle must include the set of 25 Doordarshan channels that are mandatory. The consumer has the right to opt out of the other 75 free channels to make room for their other choices. These choices can be either Free or Pay Channels. Unfortunately, This is a rule that’s being violated by many service providers till now and hence cheating the consumers!
• In addition to the base package, the providers can offer any number of customized packages for their consumers. These bundles too must include the mandatory DD channels
• The base charge of Rs.130/- (153.40, with taxes) is called the Base NCF (Base Network Capacity Fee). This’s the minimum amount any subscriber has to pay to remain as a customer. Even when he/she hasn’t selected any additional channels, that is
• For every additional 25 channels, above 100, a Network Capacity Fee (NCF) of Rs 20/- + GST will be added to your bill. For example, if you have chosen 110 SD channels from your provider, your total charges will be the Base NCF + NCF 1 = 130 + 20 = (150 + GST)
• For calculating the network capacity, each HD channel will be treated as equivalent to two SD channels. For example, in the calculation above, if you add another 10 HD channels to your list, this will be treated as 20 SD channels. Hence your total will be now 100 Free channels + 10 SD channels + 10 HD channels x 2 = 130 Channels (Not 120). Accordingly, one more NCF charge will be added for you (as you crossed 25 limit of NCF 1)
• If you opt for any pay channel, the subscription fee of that channel will be added to the above total. TRAI has ruled that no pay channel can charge more than Rs.19/- per month
• In addition to the free to air (FTA) channels, and individual pay channels (a-la-carte channels), the broadcasters (e.g. Zee, Sony India, Star Network, Times Network etc) can provide packaged products known as Broadcaster Bouquets. A bouquet is nothing but a bunch of channels bundled together for a fixed price – which is usually much less than the total prices of the individual channels in the bundle.
  For example, the Times Network has a bundle called Times Bouquet 3 which contains 5 x HD Channels and 3 x SD channels and they have priced this bouquet at Rs 20/-

In short, a consumer has the option to choose either a package (usually not very optimal) from the provider or pick and choose what he or she wants to watch. In either case, a typical consumer will end up having a combination of the following:

1. Mandatory 25 Doordarshan Channels
2. Zero or more free to air channels (Usually it’s never zero)
3. Zero or more a-la-carte (pay) channels
4. Zero or more broadcaster bouquets

The billing amount has three components: (1) The NCF charges, as explained above, (2) The total price of the paid channels and broadcaster bouquets you opted for, and (3) 18% GST on the total of the above two.

How to Shortlist Your Channels?

Now, this is where things get trickier. If you decide to continue with all those 100s of channels you have been receiving till now, your new subscription charges are sure to shoot through the roof. But then the question is ‘have you ever watched all those free channels that have been aired your way?’

Hence it’s time to write down only those channels that every member of the family actually watch. I mean all those channels that everyone – from the Pogo toddlers to the Aastha oldies – watch on a daily basis, and not once in a blue moon.

Now, you may scrutinize this list once again before submitting the same to your provider (or use their website or app or other subscription means). Typically, your list now should contain 20 to 30 channels in most cases, or say 50 or so in the worst case.

If you are going ahead with this list right away, you are not going to like the final bill amount that your provider may came up with! With all those Base Charges, NCF, Paid Channel charges and GST, you are likely to pay a few hundred rupees more than you were actually paying till now!

This is where TRAI has come to your rescue by providing a Free Channel Selector and Optimizer that will help you choose some bouquets optimally so that you can save a lot on your cable TV bill.

How to Optimize Your Cable TV / DTH Bill?

With the channels list that you have got now, you may visit TRAI Channel Selector portal https://channel.trai.gov.in/

Scroll down the page and click on the Get Started button.

It now shows some 5 steps. You can skip through all these steps by clicking the Skip button on each page, till you land on the ‘Choose Your Pay Channels’ page. I mean, you don’t really need to provide your personal information, state, language preferences, and interests at any point as requested in these 5 steps.

You will already notice that your minimum charges of 153.40/- is mentioned on the yellow bar on top.

You can now search (from the Search Box with a Lens image) for the channels you want and keep adding them to your selection. For example, you can see in the image below that I have searched for NDTV and chose NDTV 24×7 – from the three channels appeared as search results – by selecting the checkbox against it.

Using the same method, you can now search and add all those Pay Channels for your family needs.

If you don’t find any channel there, you may search for the same by clicking the ‘Free To Air Channels‘ menu item on the top of the page. You can switch between this menu item and the ‘Pay Channels’ menu item any number of times before you finish choosing all your channels.

As and when you select more channels, you can see that your subscription fee along with GST gets updated in the yellow box.

To review your list, you can choose the menu item ‘My Selection‘ and click the + (Plus) buttons against each sub section (Pay Channels, Free Channels etc). You can see that in my case, I have chosen 25 pay channels, 5 free channels and the application has automatically added the 25 mandatory DD channels. My total bill as of now stands at Rs. 450.76/-

Once the list is confirmed, it’s time to optimize your choices. By optimizing what the app does is to reduce your cost by suggesting certain bouquets instead of choosing each channel individually.

You can optimize your bill by clicking the ‘Optimize’ button on top right corner of the page. You have to again click the green ‘Optimize’ button and confirm the action on the resultant page. Once it’s done with optimizing, it throws a screen as given below.

You can see that, in my particular case, my monthly bill is already reduced by about 50 rupees by optimizing. What the TRAI Channel Selector app has done is bundling a few of my channel selections into one or more Bouquets. You can review this by clicking the + sign against the Bouquet Channels.

As you see, my NDTV individual channels have been replaced with an NDTV South Life bouquet. Similarly, HBO, Cartoon Network, CNN International etc have been bundled into Turner Family HD Plus Pack and so on.

You can keep adding or deleting your choices and keep optimizing until you meet your family’s requirements and based on your budget.

Please note that your savings from this optimizing process can be much more if your channel needs are higher. Once you are satisfied with this optimized list, you can send these details to your local provider. Or you can choose these optimized bouquets, paid channels and free channels by yourself using their online sevice. There is also an option to Save your selection using your mobile number and OTP. This didn’t quite work for me so far. I actually manually copied my optimized channel content for choosing my final package.

Please also note that the optimization process, at times, increases the total number of channels than your original list. But the app keeps in mind your total price including NCF charges etc during the optimization process. Hence you are only going to gain from this tool, even when the channel count goes up.

That’s pretty much about the TRAI Channel Selector and Optimizer app.

Fraudulent Activities by Service Providers

There have been numerous complaints from the consumers who are not complying with the TRAI regulations. Service providers like Hathway, Siti Cable Networks, Den Networks etc are the main culprits here. I am a victim of this rogue attitude from Hathway whereby the local service provider is messing with the rules. He is unwilling to remove the 100 free FTA channels that I don’t want and blames the system for that! These channels are mostly low quality local channels that are bundled with annoying ads. Basically, the service providers are forcing these channels on us so as to protect their revenue stream. Essentially they want to bloat up your total bill by adding these trash channels via the NCF slabs. I am still fighting this out and spreading awareness till my DTH service provider complies.

Please refer to this ToI news to understand what I am talking about. You may share your experiences on this issue using our comment section below.

There are also cases where the service provider only allow us to add more channels but not to drop unwanted channels. This is another way of charging more than what the customer actually consumes. In other case, no customer support is provided for customizing the channels or addressing the issues. Some of these issues are being addressed by TRAI as per this news link.

That’s pretty much about this topic. Things are improving with our systems. But the Government and the service providers need to come with a more proactive approach to solve the consumer concerns.

Let me know your opinion on the new TRAI regulation and its impact on your family’s TV routine!

The post How to Choose Your DTH or Digital Cable TV Channels Optimally? (TRAI Channel Selector & Optimizer) appeared first on ajithprasad.com.

Why Zerodha or Similar Brokerages?

Be it trading or investment, it is all about how much returns you get on your investments. To maximize your returns, you should not only buy low and sell high but also minimize the related expenses. The following table lists some actual stock trades that I did in ICICI in the past and the brokerage charges paid. The third row here roughly completes the Zerodha vs ICICIDirect comparison based on what actually I would have paid had I used the former.

Brokerage Charges – Delivery based

(For 25 shares of HCL Technologies)

You can see that I paid about Rs.372/- in brokerages for ICICI Securities for a particular transaction. But I would have paid only Rs.52/- had I done the exact same trade using Zerodha. Please note that, for Zerodha, there is no brokerage for stock investments (i.e. delivery based trades). What you pay is only towards taxes and cess levied by the government, which works out to be around 0.1% in the above case. For ICICI, it is about 0.75% including taxes.

Intraday Trading Brokerage Charges

Intraday trading is really cheap in Zerodha whereby the above trade would have costed me only Rs.15/-. ICICI would be roughly Rs.190/- for the same trade. It’s actually 0.01% or Rs 20/- per trade, whichever is lower, for Zerodha intraday trades.

For more information on how cheap Zerodha Trades can get, please check out the Zerodha Brokerage Calculator.

The other valid reason for me to go ahead with a cheap brokerage service was that I wanted to learn a bit of technical trading as well. Zerodha trading platform and apps are designed for traders who can tap the opportunities by understanding the price movements. This is something that first generation online trading platforms like ICICI was completely lacking. Please note that by trading, I am not referring to intraday trading alone. Trading using trends and charts can be for any duration – be it intraday, a few days, weeks or even months. Accordingly, you may call it intraday trading, swing trading, positional trading etc. I must admit that, after I started using Zerodha’s simple trading interface (as well as their advanced charts), I have really started learning a bit of Technical Analysis.

By the way, I must warn beginners in trading not to get puzzled by the chart view. It is absolutely optional and one can use Zerodha without seeing any chart as well. But if you are into serious trading, it’s good to understand a bit of charting and trend analysis via Zerodha Varsity (mentioned below)

Also, when I wanted to sign up with a Discount Broker service, I wanted it to be a brand that is established and have a sound technology backing them. Zerodha now is the Number 2 stock broker (behind ICICI) in India and they are ahead of HDFC, Sharekhan, Axis, Kotak etc.

Zerodha Account Opening Procedure

Account opening procedure was a breeze with Zerodha. The following were the logical steps involved in getting started with your account:

1. Visit Zerodha online and click “Open An Account”
2. Fill in your personal details and complete the signup procedure online with Aadhaar verification
3. Pay Rs.700/- online towards account opening charges (with Demat account)
4. Download the signed up form, print, paste your photo and sign it
5. Have a Zerodha agent to pick it up for you along with copy of address proof and PAN card
6. Your account will be operational within a week

With the above steps, you can start transferring money from any of your bank accounts and start trading in about a week. Having said that, you still have the possibility of doing steps 2 to 6 offline by having a Zerodha agent visit your home.

Zerodha Online Trading Interfaces

Trading on Zerodha is mostly done via a browser interface called Kite and its counterpart – Zerodha Kite Mobile app – for online trading. The web and mobile interfaces are very similar and easy to use. In fact, there are very few tabs in the user interface, namely Home or Dashboard, Orders, Holdings, Positions, Funds and Apps.

Basically, you start by adding the stock scrips of your interest by to the common area on the left called Marketwatch (Click the above image for a clearer view). You can add up to 20 scrips per tab and maximum 5 such Marketwatch tabs are allowed. The buy and sell orders are executed either from the Marketwatch itself or from the Positions, Holdings, Order windows or even the chart. Positions lists your trading positions yet to be delivered into your demat account and Holdings show your investments or delivered stocks. Funds tab is where you add the money from your bank account or withdraw the profits.

It also offers a powerful Desktop trading app called Zerodha Pi for advanced trading. Pi provides a number of features like custom alerts, and ways to back test your trade strategy via scripts etc. Pi also provides advanced charting tools. I did have my experiments with Pi and Tradescripts but reverted to Kite as I am not too much into Algorithmic style of trading. I must add that it is not exactly an Algo trading solution as placing of orders are still manual. It just provides alerts based on your script conditions and you need to place your orders then manually. More details on Pi is beyond the scope of this post as well as for beginners in trading.

Zerodha Varsity learning center

This is something that no trader or investor should miss at all. Zerodha Varsity is a complete knowledge or learning center for anything and everything concerning equities, trading, futures, options, currencies – you name it. It is the best online learning portal on investment and trading. And it still keeps evolving with more content and answers readers’ comments and doubts pretty promptly in an interactive manner. You MUST Check out Zerodha Varsity to see it for yourself.

So, What’s Good and Bad about Zerodha?

So far, I have been very happy with Zerodha primarily because of their low brokerage charges. About the trading tools – I am now more comfortable with their charts and trading tools than the transactional type of interface that ICICI has (Or other tools that I have used in the past e.g. Kotak’s trading interface long back). Another good thing about the user interface is that whether you are trading stocks, stock futures & options, currency or commodities, the process flow is the same with exact same user interface. By the way, I also did a trade once by calling the Zerodha trade help line. That process was smooth too if you keep your Client ID and PIN handy.

For those want to do highly leveraged trading, there is something called BO (Bracket Order) and CO (Cover Order). These products offer up to 25-30 times margin leverage on your cash, based on your stop loss criteria. This is a great feature for seasoned traders.

Marketwatch is one of the coolest features that I really like. Basically, I add my Portfolio stocks in one view, equities to be invested into in another and pure short term trading bets in yet another tab. In all tabs, I also add the basic indices such as Nifty, Sensex and Bank Nifty. It’s very easy to organize, get a clear view of the market and also get to see the live market pulse.

Getting an year end tax statement (for LTCG and STCG calculation) from your brokers is one of the nightmares of a trader. Zerodha’s tax statement is probably one of the best I have seen. It’s neat, simple to understand excel workbook with all your transactions and taxable figures mentioned in a consolidated form. Your statements and past transactions can be downloaded from their back office tools. Also, for those who want to invest in Direct Mutual Funds, there is a Coin Mutual Funds portal as well.

Zerodha also boasts of a highly interactive discussion portal called Z-Connect, which is another huge plus point.

About the improvement areas – It did have some technical snag in terms of getting the latest quotes for two or three days in the last two years. Zerodha, however, provides the details and reason for such errors on the trading view itself via alerts. Most of the time, it seems to be the glitch from the exchange itself.

One BIG issue I have with Zerodha is that they don’t allow users to simultaneously log on to the Kite app as well as Pi. This is kind of irritating as I would love to see the triggers on Pi and use the simpler Kite app to trade. However, they allow simultaneous sessions on Kite mobile app and web interface.

Also, it’s about time they added some more features such as better trading alerts into the Kite trading app. It’s already part of the Pi Desktop Trading Tool but I would like to see such a feature in Kite as well. There is a new Algo tool called Zerodha Streak under development, but I haven’t used it yet. That said, I need to really write a detailed post on Pi and TradeScript algorithms soon. It’s an altogether different and exciting place as well.

The 60 Day Challenge

This is an interesting proposition (which I actually missed myself while signing up). After your first 60 days of trading, if you are in profit, Zerodha will pay you back all your brokerage charges! This is subjected to a maximum of 6,000 Rupees that they will pay. Still it’s an excellent deal and many people have taken up trading as their profession after taking up the 60 Day Challenge.

That’s pretty much about Zerodha for now, although I really have a lot of experience to share. If any of you are Zerodha customers here, please provide your feedback as comments here. Others may consider checking it out along with any of the other discount brokers you have in mind.

Account Opening Link for Zerodha

Some more screenshots

Zerodha Kite Web Interface screens

Zerodha Kite Mobile App Interface

The post Zerodha Review and a Look at their Online Trading Tools appeared first on ajithprasad.com.

Bangalore’s current supply of water from its utilities board (BWSSB) is good enough to meet only 50% of its demand. Further, the ground water in this region is depleting fast. The fact that even a 1000ft deep bore well doesn’t seem to find any water in certain places explains our current plight. The case is not too different in many other parts of India.

Water saving measures in our Society

In the past, we had undertaken multiple interventions in our community to save water using various available technologies. This included, installing water saving aerators in faucets, shower heads etc and also (non-technical) lifestyle changes of saving water via restricting car wash frequency, drip irrigation methodologies for gardening etc. However, one of the biggest spend item that’s not addressed so far is how we use our toilet flushes.

Like in the case of many 10+ year old apartments in India, even we do not have water saving dual flush systems installed in our toilets. This means that every flush spends roughly 8 litres of water and each person does 8 to 12 such flushes every day. The important thing here is that up to 8 flushes a day are typically used for disposing our liquid waste (urine mainly). This is where, I think, there’s a huge opportunity to save water.

Why Half Flushing?

In order to flush out urine, one just needs to spend 3-4 litres of water or half of what your toilet flush dispenses per flush. While dual flushes address this problem, majority of our toilets are still not dual flush type. Hence, we need to manually do a half-flush while flushing liquid waste and this is exactly the aim of this campaign (non-commercial) that I am trying to run.

Dear friends, please watch the following video and make sure that it reaches your contacts living in the Indian cities – especially apartment dwellers. We together can save millions of litres of water via disciplined measures such as half flushing technique. Typically, one can save up to 15% on your overall water consumption via this method alone. Hence please act today!

If the video doesn’t appear on this page, please click this direct link

And, if someone is interested in knowing about numerous practical ways to save water and cut down on your water bill, please feel free to contact me. This is completely free and I have no business interest whatsoever when it comes to conservation of water. I can just share a few tips with you that worked well for our apartment community.

Please start saving water today via optimizing your consumption!

The post Save Water via Half Flushing Technique appeared first on ajithprasad.com.

Just going by that primary definition of ‘appreciation’ let me explain an easy way of picking safe and sure-shot long term portfolio stocks. I have two objectives here – first, to explain this simple methodology of picking steady growth portfolio stocks and second, to share a portfolio of 12 solid large cap stocks that one can blindly invest and forget for the next 10 or 20 years to build massive wealth. Well, I am not talking about lump sum investment here but one can keep buying these twelve stocks at every market correction opportunity OR at regular intervals (SIP) in order to build long term wealth. This is also an attempt answer some of the queries that I keep getting from the readers of this blog regarding steady portfolio stocks for long term.

The Method of Picking Steady Growth Stocks or Best Stocks to Invest in India for Long Term

Now, over to the methodology – It’s actually a pretty simple technique and no rocket science. Please follow the following steps to arrive at your final list.

Step 1: First you have to make an initial list of about 50 stocks from multiple sectors/industries. This initial list can be easily made by taking all 30 Sensex stocks plus say 20 big names from the NSE Top 100 list. If you are confused here, start with the list of top 100 stocks in NSE itself.

Step 2: Now, since our aim is price ‘appreciation’ in the long term, we need to have a look at the long term chart of these companies. You can use Yahoo finance, Money Control or NSE / BSE charts to see the 10 year or 15 year chart of the companies shortlisted from Step 1. In this step, you have to pick all those companies which have a steadily upward going chart (which of course indicates price appreciation). E.g. the charts of HDFC Bank or Asian Paints look exceptionally good and not that of SBI or ONGC. Discard all those companies that don’t have a smooth upward looking price journey and you will be left with 15 or 20 good growth stories (price-wise or chart-wise)

Step 3: This list, of say 20 companies that have great looking charts, has to be further scrutinized for good growth parameters. Here, I simply look at the RoE (Return on Equity), RoCE (Return on Capital Employed) and Sales and Profit parameters of these stocks. I usually use the Screener site to check these parameters. For long term growth stocks, a steady RoE of say above 15 (preferably 20+), RoCE of above 20 (Preferably 25 or 30) and a positive sales and profit growth in double figures is more than enough. Don’t be surprised if you notice companies with an RoE of 50 or RoCE of 200 plus.

Step 4: Most of the stocks with from Step 2 and 3 may be having good growth parameters. Now, to drop a few more, please take a look at their Debt / Equity ratio, again using Screener. Here, for long term stocks, I would drop all those companies that have a Debt to Equity ratio of more than 25% (0.25). Ideally, one should pick zero debt companies here or the ones with Debt / Equity ratio as zero or nearly zero. Please note that in the case of Banking, Financial and NBFC stocks, one shouldn’t look at this ratio, as their primary business itself is borrowing and lending

The above four steps would leave you with a dozen or so stellar performers that you can invest in for solid long term gains.

Good and Not-So-Good long term charts

Here’re some examples of typical charts to go for, as discussed in Step 2. Please note that one has to look into the 10 or 15 year chart and NOT 2 or 5 year charts while hunting for potential long term portfolio stocks.

Exceptional growth stocks with great charts

Decent companies with poor long term charts

Well, these are still portfolio stocks for historic reasons but they don’t necessarily fetch you the desired price appreciation. On the other hand, just by looking at their charts, one can figure out that they are good for medium term trading point of view whereby they offer many up and down cycles in the long term charts.

My list of 12 Buy-and-Forget Long Term Portfolio Stocks

Based on the above screening, the following would be my list of the best stocks to invest in India for long term. Ten of them are index stocks while two others are high growth non-index stocks with proven track record and continuous growth in the future as well.

1. Asian Paints Ltd
2. Bajaj Auto Ltd
3. Bajaj Finance Ltd
4. HCL Technologies Ltd
5. HDFC
6. HDFC Bank Ltd
7. Hindustan Unilever Ltd
8. Lupin Ltd
9. Maruti Suzuki Ltd
10. Pidilite Industries
11. Yes Bank Ltd
12. Zee Entertaintment Ltd

Now, all those who are looking for multibagger recommendations, from a few months point of view, may ask yourselves the following question. Would you put your hard-earned money in risky multibagger stocks OR in safe, established businesses that can return 10 or 15 times over a ten year period?

Happy Investing!

(Standard disclaimer: I am not a qualified investment advisor. Do your own research before investing or consult a certified financial advisor. I personally hold some of the above stocks in my long term portfolio)

The post Long Term Portfolio Stocks in India – Best Stocks to Invest in India for Long Term appeared first on ajithprasad.com.

However, things began to go wrong for most of these companies as the perceived benefits of acquisitions didn’t really result in increased profits. On the contrary, adverse market conditions and integration issues played against them and they started piling up debts much faster than they could have ever imagined. Tata Steel, GMR Infrastructure, Suzlon, Lanco Infratech – the list goes on.

In this post, we will talk about three such companies (and their penny stocks) that made such oversees acquisitions. While they failed at that, they seem to have realized their mistakes, corrected them (or in the process of doing so) and now on the way to turn around themselves into profit stories yet again. Needless to say such company stocks can turn into multibaggers for any investor with high risk appetite! Of course, these are not portfolio stocks and hence one shouldn’t blindly invest all their money into them but a retail investor can consider a small exposure on risk-reward potential basis.

The stories of Subex, Suzlon and Ballarpur Industries

The turn around stories – and hence potential multibaggers in India – we are going to talk about today are Subex Ltd, Suzlon Energy Ltd, and Ballarpur Industries Ltd (Note: Read updates below).

1. Subex Ltd

Company website: http://www.subex.com/

History: Subex was founded by Subash Menon and Alex PJ (hence the name SubEx) in 1992. They initially dealt with fiber optics cables but shifted focus to niche Telecom software – primarily fraud management systems and revenue assurance software.

The company was steadily growing since its inception. However, in the boom that followed the DotCom fall they decided to acquire many small Telecom software companies abroad. Initially, all acquisitions were funded by cash and equities but then they started borrowing and raising funds via FCCB (foreign currency convertible bond) route as well. During this time, one of the founders and promoter left the company making it more like a family run company by promoters with questionable intentions. The debt of the company started piling up and the stock crashed from its high of 700+ to 20s in a matter of two years.

Investment rationale: After their original promoters were unceremoniously packaged out for all that went wrong in their hands, the new management took control over Subex in an attempt to clean up the company’s balance sheet. And they have been quite successful at that in just three years.

At the moment, the company is almost debt free and it’s on the growth path again. With a market cap of 500cr, annual sales figures or 300cr and a debt of just 50cr, and 100cr in free cash, it looks like an investment grade company again.

At the time of writing this post (May 2016), the stock is trading at around Rs. 10 and the book value is more than 5 rupees. The interest outflow is very negligible now and hence it really looks like a turn around story to me and a potential a multibagger.

Risks: With almost negligible debts, the only potential risk for this company is any adverse market conditions for Telecom players in Europe and Latin America.

2. Suzlon Energy Ltd

Company website: http://suzlon.com/

History: Suzlon is another great company that went from steady growth path to huge losses after their acquisition of the German company Senvion in 2007. This wind energy company reported their last profit in 2008-’09 and it has been steadily declining since then as they couldn’t manage their debt bill. The debt kept mounting at an alarming pace and when it hit more than Rs. 17,000 cr they had no other go but shelve off the German subsidiary, and it finally happened last year (2015).

Investment rationale: After exiting Senvion, the company still has a debt of around 8000Cr, however, only 4000Cr of this is long term debt an it’s payable only in 2019. There’re further FCCB bonds that may get converted into equities by 2023 and hence there’s no further equity dilution in the next seven years. Of course, there is still interest burden but it looks manageable as the company’s operating profit is steadily climbing since the Senvion sale. Further, the operating profit margin (OPM) on the standalone basis is climbing rapidly as there is no major expense or capital expansion taking place.

Last year, the Sun Pharmaceuticals’ Dilip Sanghvi acquired 23% stake in Suzlon Energy and this makes Dilip Sanghvi and Tulsi Tanti (original promoter and founder) – two big and reputed names – the main promoters of this company. With the NDA Government’s increased focus in the renewable energy (1,75,000MW in next 7 years) sector, Suzlon has also diversified into Solar Energy which is cheaper to produce and implement than wind energy. They intend to deliver 15,000MW installed capacity in India in the next five years, off which they already signed a 4000MW project recently with Andhra Pradesh government. The manufacturing capacity of Suzlon is now 4000MW per year with no new investment required. They now have enough working capital as well after exiting Senvion and hence there’s no need to borrow anything in the near future. Overall, things look great again for Suzlon and hence a potential multibagger over the next few years for patient investors.

Risks: While the company doesn’t need to pay off any of their debts in the next three years, they indeed need to pay interest on a regular basis and also maintain cash generation to pay off their loans in 2019. Another risk is any potential decision in favour of solar power vs wind power due to cost factors as Suzlon is still more than 75% a Wind Power company. The company’s book value is negative as of now and this is one of the biggest risks for any investor.

3. Ballarpur Industries

Update on June 08, 2016): This recommendation has been discontinued as the BILT – Sabah Forest Industries didn’t go through as expected. Read the news at this link.

Company website: http://biltpaper.com/

History: I vividly remember myself investing in this stock (BILT) almost 15 years back and making some money when things were going good for Ballarpur Industries – an Avantha group (that owns Crompton Greaves etc) company and a leading name in the Indian Printing and Writing paper market. It was a very good dividend paying company too at 25-30% dividend paid every year (They still pay dividends, although much lesser).

However, things began to go wrong with the company when it acquired a Malaysian paper company namely ‘Sabah Forest Industries Sdn’ for $260 million. Like many other Indian companies that we discussed above, they too piled up debts that now stands at a whopping Rs.6000 crores.

Investment rationale: BILT has already taken the corrective measures and they are in the process of selling the Malaysian arm. A deal has been finalized with the buyer (Pandawa Sakti Sabah Sdn) for $500 million (Rs.3300 Crore). The sale date is due in May 2016 following which BILT can write off half their debts instantly. This would allow them to focus back on the Indian arm and be the leader yet again. With the interest outflow reduced drastically, I believe that this company will be back on track again and the stock can appreciate from here own and yield significant return for its investors. Further, the book value is still around Rs.25/- per share which is significant higher than it’s current market price (CMP).

Risks: The Sabah sale final date has been pushed three-four times already by the buyer while an agreement is in place. If the deal is called off, just in case, it may be bad for the company.

Disclaimer

I am not an investment advisor but just a retail investor and trader like most readers here. Hence, please take professional help before investing in the stocks discussed here. I have vested interest in most of the stocks that I write about and you can check out my equity portfolio as a disclosure. I am not responsible for any loss or gain that you may make in the stock market after following the articles on my blog. Also, it is recommended that investors take positions in a staggered manner than investing in one shot in any of the stocks for that matter.

(At the time of writing this post, I am invested in Subex since several months and accumulated Suzlon shares recently. I have interest in buying BILT based on the Sabah sale news)

Happy investing!

The post 3 Potential Multibagger Stocks that are Turn Around Stories appeared first on ajithprasad.com.

What is given below is not entirely my inventions but mostly influenced by recipes of Indian summer drinks available on the web. However, since I have been making one different drink per day, I got to experiment a lot with various combinations. The theme is broadly around plenty of citrus juices, seasonal fruits and at times with milk products. My favorite flavors like fresh mint leaves and ginger adding that extra punch.

Before heading on to the recipes, please note that, for the sake of brevity, I am not writing these recipes in professional style. Also, unless specifically mentioned all recipes are to serve two people.

So, here you go.

1. Aloe Vera Lime Juice

Last week, we did a round of pruning of our plants (whatever was left there, that is) in the balcony and got plenty of Aloe Vera rinds. While I was wondering what to do with it, I stumbled upon a recipe on the web which I modified a bit to make this refreshing juice.

Ingredients: Aloe Vera gel – 2 tablespoons, Juice of two Limes, Salt – ¼ teaspoon, Sugar – 4 to 5 teaspoons, Water – 1½ cups, Ice cubes – ½ cup

Method of Preparation: Pour Aloe Vera gel, Lime juice, Sugar, Salt and about 50 ml of water into the blender jar and blend well for about 20-30 seconds. Add the remaining water and ice cubes and blend further for about 10 seconds. Pour into a glass and enjoy!

Tip: Aloe Vera can be mildly toxic if you do not extract the gel carefully. The yellow part or latex between the skin and the gel contains ‘Aloin’ which shouldn’t be consumed at all. If the gel extract is transparent without any traces of yellow (as shown in the picture below), then it’s very safe to consume it. In either case, do not add more than a tablespoon of aloe vera per glass of juice.

2. Double Citrus Juice

Ingredients: Freshly squeezed orange juice of 2-3 navel oranges, Juice of two limes, Water – 1 cup, Salt – ¼ teaspoon, Sugar – 3 to 4 teaspoons, Ice cubes – 4 to 5

Method of Preparation: Just blend everything together in a shaker or blender and enjoy!

3. Spicy Buttermilk

This is something that we used to make back home in Kerala. I just modified it a bit to suit my current taste (medium spicy and mildly sweetened)

Ingredients: Refrigerated curd – 250ml, Water – 150ml, Salt – ½ teaspoon or as per taste, Sugar – ½ teaspoon, Shallots / Sambar onions – 2 to 3, Green Chilli – 1 (small), Ginger – ½ inch, Curry leaves – 7 to 8

Method of Preparation: Blend curd, water, salt and sugar well for about 20 to 30 seconds in a blender / mixer. Coarsely crush pealed shallots, green chilli, ginger and curry leaves in a mortar. Add it to the blender along with the rest and blend for another 3-4 seconds. Refreshing spicy buttermilk is ready!

The color of the buttermilk may vary (light green or mild pink) based on the leading ingredient.

4. Kiwi Smoothie

Kiwi fruits seem to be suddenly cheaper in the Indian markets (due to excess import?). I saw them in the More Supermarket for as low as 14 rupees apiece last week and decided to experiment with the same in multiple ways.

Ingredients: Kiwi fruits – 1 (Pealed and chopped), Chilled milk – 1½ cups, Water – ½ cup, Sugar – 4 to 5 teaspoons, Ice cubes – 5 to 6

Method of Preparation: Blend kiwi fruit pieces, Sugar and water in a mixer or blender for about 30 seconds (or until no small pieces of kiwi fruits are seen). Now, add milk and ice cubes and blend for another 15-20 seconds. Pour into a glass and enjoy the smoothie!

Tip: You can add half a banana, while blending the kiwi, to make it an even richer smoothie with a better flavor. Yes, Kiwi and Banana can go well. In fact, I had made that once but forgot to click a picture

5. Minty Watermelon – Lime Juice

Water melons are indeed the fruit of the season. But did you know that some lime juice and ground mint leaves can turn your humble watermelon juice into an exotic Mocktail?

Ingredients: Cut Watermelon pieces with seeds – 5 to 6 cups, Juice of 1 lime, Fresh Mint leaves – 8 to 10, Salt – ¼ teaspoon, Sugar – 3 to 4 teaspoons, Ice cubes – 5 to 6

Method of Preparation: Blend everything together (including the seeds in the watermelon) for about 20 seconds. Pour into a glass and garnish with 2-3 fresh mint leaves and enjoy!

Tip: Try another variant by replacing mint leaves with ¼ green chilli while blending! This has more punch in it.

6. Lime – Ginger Juice

This is one of my all-time favorites and this is what we usually offer to our guests in the summer.

Ingredients: Juice of 2 limes, Extract of 1” ginger piece, Salt – ¼ teaspoon, Sugar – 4 to 6 teaspoons, Ice cubes – 5 to 6, Fresh mint leaves to garnish

Method of Preparation: Blend everything (except mint leaves) together for about 10-15 seconds or until the sugar completely dissolves. Pour into a glass and top with mint leaves. You can try garnishing with crushed mint leaves as well. I usually, chew the leaves after I finish the juice ?

Tip: In order to extract the ginger juice, first crush it in a mortar without any water and squeeze out the juice. Then crush it again with a teaspoon of water to get some more of it squeezed. Filter this extract before adding to the blender.

7. Lazy Lassi

This is our good old Lassi that doesn’t need any introduction.

Ingredients: Curd – 400 ml, Sugar – 5 to 6 teaspoons, Salt – ¼ teaspoon, Edible Rose Water – ½ teaspoon (OR Cardamom powder ¼ teaspoon), Ice cubes – ½ cup

Method of Preparation: Blend everything together for about 20 seconds, pour into tall glasses and enjoy!

Tip: Many Rose water brands (including Dabur) that you see in the market are good for cosmetic purposes alone and hence not edible grade. Hence, double check before buying the same

8. Kiwi – Lime Juice

This is another super-refreshing drink for the summer!

Ingredients: Kiwi fruit – 1 (Pealed and chopped), Juice of 1 lime, Sugar – 4 to 5 teaspoons, Salt – ¼ teaspoon, Water – 1 ½ cups, Ice cubes – ½ cup

Method of Preparation: Blend kiwi fruit pieces, Lime juice, Sugar and Salt along with some 50 ml of for about 30 seconds so that a neat pulp is formed. Add the rest of the water and ice cubes and blend well. Pour into a glass of water and consume immediately (If you are storing in the fridge, mix well before drinking as kiwi juice – just like freshly made pineapple juice – will have the fruit parts floating after a few minutes)

Bonus Tip

Convert it into something exciting: Barring the ones featuring milk products, any of the above drinks can be quickly converted into a summer cocktail by adding 30 to 45 ml of your favorite spirit while blending ?

Make these summer coolers at home and let me know how they turned out to be.

The post 8 Indian Summer Drinks & Recipes to Beat the Heat appeared first on ajithprasad.com.

As you grow older, the maturity level of friendships at different stages of life was expected to improve and the acceptance of the above-mentioned diversity was instrumental in maintaining those friendships. And it did work that way too as most of your discussions were face to face and healthy despite political, religious, and cultural differences. Whenever you thought your discussions went astray or not in the right spirit, you could feel the same and you (or others in the circle) intervened immediately and took corrective measures. And most importantly, you still used all your senses in maintaining relationships!

Then the (Online) Social Networks came into existence which gave you a wonderful opportunity to (re)connect with all your friends from the past and present. Due to the ‘open nature’ of these networks, you discovered new friends, acquaintances and even strangers who eventually became your friends! The technology suddenly became so good and handy. You could not only share photos, audio and video from your own personal life but from other individuals, media or publishing houses too! The concept of ‘viral’ came into play and the new generation media tapped into every opportunity to dig out sensational topics, manufacture news, create #hashtags, and send the same to you so that you can share it with your ‘audience’ (not necessarily friends) as well. You became ‘carriers’ and ‘propagators’ of such thoughts and opinions that weren’t originally yours. Campaign houses, News curators and Content creators rejoiced at your cost. The more sensational the story was, the faster it spread! And you really enjoyed playing your part in spreading it – sometimes even unverified and far-from-truth content too, because you were already bought into a plan!

But you didn’t notice one thing! Your relationship with your friends was somehow getting affected on the Social Media (and hence outside that domain as well) without you having a clue about it.

And how exactly did it happen?

• On the Social Networks, the difference between your family, friends, acquaintances and the general public was fast disappearing and for you everyone was the same – i.e. your audience!
• Due to the above reason, you thought your audience would relate to your favorite topics as well – be it related to your Religion, Caste, Political Party, Modi, Rahul, Kejriwal, Beef, AwardWapsi, Khan or Kher
• You were not really reading your audience with all your senses open (lost opportunity with technology?) and hence your views were mostly one-sided or skewed. You just clicked, touched, liked, shared, and LOLed for everything (and used your brain lesser) with the technology created separation between you and your audience
• Due to the above mentioned separation, you could strongly tell things that you wouldn’t otherwise tell to someone in your face-to-face discussions or chitchats! You were not inhibited when it came to openly venting your extreme views on sensitive topics such as Religion, Politics, Racism etc
• Once you were opinionated, you would argue endlessly, would use strong words and would try every bit to convince yourself and your audience that your point of view was always right! You thought you were the most logical person in the world. The Social Media proved to be a great platform for even the shyest person in real life to be highly logical and open! Of course, you were logical – in a set that contained just you. i.e. { you }
• Eventually, your Online Social Circle became a bunch of those of who ‘liked’ and ‘agreed’ with you and the ones who didn’t. The harmless Social Media ‘Like’ suddenly started getting another meaning. Since you ‘liked’ those who agreed with your views, you even started ‘Hating’ those who didn’t buy your views! In short, ‘I don’t agree with you’ became ‘I hate you’!
• Some of your real life friends who couldn’t agree with you kept quiet, some just ‘emoted’ it, some commented with mild displeasure and some reacted vehemently; And some of them actually started disliking you!
• Many open facebook groups became war grounds of different viewpoints and private WhatsApp groups of school/college friends became bullying camps!

And the end result – You sulked at work and home, your blood pressure levels raised, your health was at risk and most importantly, you lost some good friends! The funny thing is that, you didn’t even realize your Gods, Religion, Political Party, Modi, Rahul or Khan wouldn’t fetch you real friends or mend broken relationships!

Ever thought what did you actually fight for and what would you lose at the end?

Some Tips for Maintaining the Social Media Decorum

Listed below are not exactly the ultimate Social Media guidelines but some tips that may help you in maintaining your relationships on Social networks.

– Make sure that your posts are relevant and addressed to the right audience – i.e.Your friends, acquaintances, public etc.

– Before submitting each post or comment, double-check your language – not only for grammatical errors but more to see if you are using strong or abusive words.

– Avoid forwarding unverified content and twisted facts. These days, the media and the social media campaign houses/publishers of political parties and religions are so damn good at twisting facts and projecting incomplete views.

– If possible, forward the original news than the fabricated versions of the same

– Avoid forwarding spreading hate content in public forums (highly debatable topic) even if it may be deemed acceptable to most of your audience. If it hurts even one among hundred, it’s still objectionable!

– Topics such as Politics, Religion etc are best avoided on your School-College-Family groups on Facebook or WhatsApp, unless you have created the group to discuss only those topics

– Keep the diversity of your audience in mind even within a single focused target group.

– Before making each comment, make sure that you are being relevant to the original topic.

– Avoid following up or replying to your own replies on Indian online news sites. In order to increase traffic to their sites, they will intentionally create controversial topics and sometimes lies. Further, there are so many paid commenters of various religious/political groups working on such sites.

– Use private messaging to deal with those who abuse. You don’t need to go down to their level to win an argument or a point! If he’s your real life friend, you may want to forgive him for a few times, others deserve to be blocked or banned.

– Do not stretch each argument beyond two replies. If you can’t convince or win over someone in two or three comments, you can’t win in even 20! In such cases one of them might be wrong too and it could be you! Even if that’s not the case, it’s better to give up as there’s no point in winning on ego grounds.

– There’s no need to click obligatory ‘Likes’ and try to avoid unnecessary threaded comment series such as “Good one -> Thank you -> You’re welcome -> :)” that don’t add any value to anybody.

– Avoid following those who spread negativity or hatred even if they are your friends.

– You can still have ‘Social friends’ without following them.

– Be ready to ‘unfriend’ acquaintances if the friendship don’t make sense any longer.

Intolerance and the Social Media

So, everyone in India is talking about tolerance and intolerance now. In my opinion, many of the intolerance issues existed in India much before 60 years of Congress rule or 18 months of Modi government. It goes very well back into our history – before independence or for that matter even before the British invaded us, we had our issues. Our ancient ‘Varna’ system, several religions, 1000s of castes and 100s of languages and their numerous dialects were always the perfect recipe for intolerance. It’s just that many of the unfortunate incidents in the past didn’t get any visibility or viral coverage in the old generation media. Now, it’s the exact opposite situation wherein each and every incident – small or big – is spread, participated and reacted by millions of people in no time in the context of the new generation media. Unfortunately, you are being party to the whole commotion, sometimes, without even realizing it. So, who’s to blame here?

If you still don’t understand intolerance, it’s staring at your screen right now!

Modi may or may not become the best PM of India! Rahul may or may not quit politics! Khans may produce hits and flops! But lost friendships may not come back to you. Think about it…

The post Social Media Intolerance and the Art of Losing Friends appeared first on ajithprasad.com.

It’s more than a month since I went antisocial with my phone! Yes, I decided to break free from the social pressures caused by the phone and this decision was primarily triggered by the misuse of an old smartphone recently provided to my now-teen-son who obviously tried to emulate his parents in terms of the best practices of using a smartphone!

In a sudden attempt to set the right example to him (and prove to the immediate world around as well) I, the self proclaimed role model of my son, uninstalled WhatsApp and Twitter apps in quick succession and then removed Facebook & Google Plus accounts from the phone. This was followed by disabling notifications from all apps except email and text messaging which are like bare necessities for the time being. The phone is now used for basic telephony, text messaging and voluntary reading of news via some apps alone! Of course, there is occasional use of maps, camera, portfolio apps, fitness assistants and web browser – all at will – and hence it’s not competely an Unsmart phone yet.

After the initial phase of violent withdrawal symptoms, I must say that the life is coming back to normalcy and very peaceful right now with no urge to stare at the phone all the time or keep swiping on the screen without any particular intent. However, there is both good and bad attached to drastic decisions such as quitting social apps, under-utilizing the phone and turning the clock back by a few years.

The following are some of the positives that I already see by getting rid of social apps and unwanted alerts on my phone.

(+) Suddenly, I am no more hiding from the co-passengers in the lift with the help of the big smartie and even better – I am able to establish eye contacts with them and even smile at them. Wow! I am still social in real life too.

(+) No more weird movement of my index finger along the imaginary unlock pattern of the phone which used to happen earlier even when the phone was not in hand. This symptom was more like those cricket addicted kids doing an imaginary Rahul Dravid style front foot defense with the full-face blade, at an imaginary ball delivered at them. If the phone was in hand, the indication was primarily a sequence of unlocking the phone, swiping the home screens / launching any app, and then locking the phone.

i.e.

while (awake) {
/* for no particular reason */
   thePhone.unlock();
   thePhone.swipe();
   thePhone.lock();
}

(+) Better interaction with the family while at home or away in an eatery, event or outing. The focus changes back to enjoying the moment than capturing and sharing the moment immediately to get likes from the ones who matter less.

(+) There is no more grinning at the phone or romancing with it which used to happen earlier in public places or even while driving. Now, you are more alert without a smart phone!

(+) Not much contribution to those crowd-sourced apps that make money by fooling you into them – Not as many posts, reviews or comments while on the move and such actions, if at all necessary, happens only on the desktop or laptop.

(+) Your Internet bandwidth usage is reduced drastically with some meaningless media/videos (rated ones too) getting out of the way.

(+) Better judgement and ability to distinguish between necessity and nice-to-have things in life. Now, usage of the social media is back in the desktop world alone and hence there’s a fixed time for doing that. Further, no insomnia caused by the connected phone!

(+) Suddenly, the three year old phone seems to perform like a server! Wow, now I don’t need to support China’s economy every three years (every few months for many?) or live with their plastic dumping terrorism.

(+) No more selfies. I was never a selfie fan but I must confess that I might have taken about half a dozen in my whole life. With no immediate sharing possibility, there is no urge to capture even those rare selfies. This may also result in huge savings in the future as there’s no need to procure those Sergei  Bubka like selfie accessories.

Having said all those, I realize that there are some drawbacks as well when you suddenly decide to go against the social flow…

(-) Firstly, you are a friend or relative to someone only as long as you are connected to them socially on these apps. To be frank, I didn’t receive any wish from anybody during this Onam – via call, text message or in person – because I am no more connected and the Onam was celebrated primarily on WhatsApp. Of course, there were many Facebook wishes similar to radio broadcasts which I reciprocated with my ‘likes’. Being antisocial by choice, I coped with it in no time.

(-) You may miss some focused groups that stood for a specific, meaningful purpose. As a matter of fact, two or three WhatsApp groups out of a dozen that I had, before calling it quits, were really useful.

(-) Your decision to reduce mobile usage is effective only if your dear ones and your connected circle take similar actions. It’s sad to see a driver, typically a husband, toiling through the Bangalore traffic while the insensitive ones – typically a wife, teenage kids or colleagues in a pool – in the car contributing heavily to WhatsApp and Facebook traffic through out the journey.

(-) You are perceived uncool and outdated! Your teenager kid might even try to educate you on topics like ‘what is a mobile app?’ or ‘what is meant by software?’. And at times, it is virtually impossible to convince an adventurous youngster friend that some of us – the Software Industry veterans – had actually worked on the first generation mobile applications at a time when many of them were still in their diapers…

and finally…

(-) You don’t get to play an Arnab Goswamy by breaking a news on your favorite WhatsApp group! Now, that’s a tragedy as you lose the chance to play a hero fighting against all injustice in this world. Well, perhaps one can compensate that with some more detailed analysis on desktop social media…

– Yours Truly ‘Antisocial’

(PS: My sincere apologies to those who weren’t informed about quitting my past cool life)

The post Going Antisocial with an Unsmart Phone appeared first on ajithprasad.com.

Investing in Mutual funds (Read Systematic Investment Plan or SIP) is probably the easiest and safest route to enter the stock market rather than going for direct stock investment. However, the return on investment can be much higher if you go for direct equities as long as you pick the right stocks and companies to invest in.

An ideal stock portfolio (Read my stock portfolio that I often update) should have a mix of large cap and midcap stocks across several sectors/industries to minimize your risks. However, if you are looking at a faster growth rate you can even think of a Portfolio that’s heavier on the Midcap side if not an All-Midcap Portfolio. Given below, is a list of 20 handpicked midcap stocks that I believe should offer significant wealth creation (at least four to five times, if not more) for investors in the next ten years.

My List of 20 Midcap Stocks in India

Most of the Midcap stocks in this list are those with the proven record of high return on investment (Based on the ROE, ROCE parameters, sales/profits growth numbers etc) over a period of time. I have also included a couple rather new players which I think will excel in their respective businesses and hence offer higher returns to investors. Further, these companies are run by excellent management and promoters too and hence the business health and longevity is not under threat.

Here’s my winner list:

1. Amara Raja Batteries
2. Apollo Hospitals Enterprises
3. Atul Auto Ltd
4. Aurobindo Pharma
5. Avanti Feeds
6. Bharat Forge Ltd
7. Britannia Industries
8. Cera Sanitaryware
9. Colgate Palmolive Ltd
10. Dewan Housing Finance Ltd
11. eClerx Services
12. IndusInd Bank
13. Kaveri Seed Company
14. Kitex Garments (Previously suggested)
15. Mayur Uniquoters
16. Motherson Sumi Ltd
17. Pidilite Industries
18. Torrent Pharmaceuticals
19. UPL Ltd
20. Zensar Technologies Ltd

(Some notable omissions include Page Industries, Eicher Motors etc which have run up quite a bit)

Investment Methodology

Since the markets have run up a lot, putting all your money as lump sum investment can be very risky at the moment. Hence the following is the methodology that I suggest.

• Make a shortlist of 12-15 of the above midcaps for your investment. Give more weightage to sectors like Pharma, Banking and Auto ancillaries
• Systematically buy these stocks either by putting a fixed amount per month into buying the shortlisted stocks or by adding these stocks at every market correction
• Track your investment on a periodic basis for any change in fundamentals of the selected companies. You don’t need to track them on a daily basis as long as your choices are good and have a long term plan with them
• Periodically (once a year may be) validate and check the sector-wise weightage of your holdings and readjust if required
• Watch them grow! And do not let the market fluctuations affect your investment decision UNLESS the fundamentals of your invested companies change.

Disclaimer: I am not a qualified finance adviser or portfolio manager. Please consult the experts before taking any investment decision in the equity market. You may have to do further research on these stocks on financial portals, websites of these companies as well as mandatory filings by them before taking any positions. As a disclosure, I have investments in many of the stocks mentioned above at the time of writing of this post.

Related Posts

10 Multibagger Midcap Stocks in India
10 Small Cap Stocks with Growth Potential

Good luck with your investments!

The post 20 Midcap Stocks in India For Accelerated Wealth Creation appeared first on ajithprasad.com.

Updated July 1st, 2017
With the introduction of GST, the restaurant bill format and calculation is pretty straightforward and simple. The following table summarizes the GST rates on restaurant bills.

Important:

• Home delivered or takeaway food from restaurants categories listed above would still attract the respective rates, regardless of the fact that you are not availing Air conditioning or Heating services
• The service charges in the particular restaurant, if any, should not be charged any GST because that’s already covered under GST. If any restaurant does so, you must raise your concern with the management
• If a restaurant is charging GST but if their 15 digit registered GSTIN Number is not present in the bill, you don’t need to pay any GST
• Further, you may check the validity of the GSTIN number present in the bill, by searching for the same at the following URL:
  Check for fake GST number

Old post on calculating restaurant bill based on VAT, ST, SC etc continues below…

How many times hasn’t your bloated restaurant bill left you clueless as to how components like VAT (Value Added Tax), ST (Service Tax), SC (Service Charge) etc are being calculated?

Worry no more…

Without complicating the matter much, let me explain how a typical restaurant bill break up is arrived at as per the prevailing taxing norms as of June 1, 2015.

VAT, ST and SC

The following are the rules for calculating VAT, ST and SC.

VAT is typically charged at 14.5% on all food items and non-alcoholic beverages (includes, packaged water, juices, mocktail etc).

VAT for alcoholic beverages and cocktails is 5.5%.

SC is charged at restaurant owner’s will. This can vary from 0% to 20%. This is like an in-built tip and if Service charge is levied, it has to be clearly mentioned in the menu.

ST is calculated at 5.6%. Service Tax is actually 14% and it is applicable on 40% of the total bill (Including food total + Service charge).

ST* = 5.6%, i.e. 14% of 40

Notes:
(i). As per the government rule, the Service Tax is applicable only to those restaurants and food joints having the air-conditioning or central air-heating facility
(ii). VAT should not be levied on the Service Charge part. There are some restaurants who do such wrong calculation practices (See comments section)
(iii). ST* has been hiked to 5.8% (Including Swachh Bharat Cess or SBC) after this article was written
(iv). ST* has been hiked further to a total of 6% (Including SBC and KKC – Krishi Kalyan Cess) in 2016

A Sample Restaurant Bill Format and Calculation

Attached here is a sample restaurant bill that I recently (after June 1st, 2015) got from our family dine out.

(Click on the image to Enlarge)

The table below explains how the above bill amount is calculated.

Please note that some restaurants may provide separate bills for alcoholic beverages and the food. In such cases the applicable VAT is different for both the bills.

Hope that explains how the final rounded bill amount of Rs.3280/- is arrived at. Next time, please pay attention to your bill details because many restaurants may not have changed their billing system yet.

Happy Dining!

The post Restaurant Bill Format in India? GST (and VAT, Service Tax) Service Charge Explained appeared first on ajithprasad.com.