Author: Raoji

The Book ‘Bottle of Lies’ is written by Katherine Eban, who is an investigative journalist and author.

The Book covers the rise and fall of Ranbaxy and the dark side of Indian pharma

I found the Book to be a very disturbing and distressing read.

I was shocked to know that nearly all Indian generic pharma cos (Ranbaxy, Sun, DrReddy, Cipla, Glenmark etc) were under the USFDA lens for falsifying data, tests, hiding evidence, faulty manufacturing practices etc

Our companies never rejected any batches for not measuring upto standards. In fact, defective batches were sold in the local Indian market or sold in Africa.

In some parts of Africa, doctors recommend 10x the dosage of Indian medicines to their patients as the efficacy of the medicine is so low.

The Book covers the Ranbaxy saga in great deal. How the Singh brothers fooled Daichi is something to marvel at. What I found incredible was that the malpractices at Ranbaxy continued even after Daichi took over.

The Book is very harsh on Indian companies and the employees working there. Initially, the natural instinct for the Indian reader is to defend our homegrown champions but the evidence and the data is so damning that it would be like defending the indefensible.

Another takeaway of the Book was the effective whistle blower mechanism in the US. Dinesh Thakur , the whistle blower, whose untiring efforts led to Ranbaxy paying a $500 Million fine, got around $48 Million for his efforts.

Contrast that with the arrest and hounding of the whistle blower in India who had exposed GVK Biosciences.

I would strongly recommend this Book to all investors and those interested in Indian Pharma.

The flipside of reading this book is you may lose all faith in medicines manufactured by Indian pharma majors !

The Book HDFC Bank 2.0 is written by Tamal Bandyopadhyay, a journalist of over 35 years of experience covering the banking industry.

The Book is divided into 3 parts-it’s digital journey, its origins and the legacy of Aditya Puri.

I found the part of the digital journey to be quite interesting. Its incredible how a large bank like HDFC Bank was able to disrupt itself, instead of letting fintechs do it.

Going digital enable HDFC Bank to offer its customers a wide variety of products with significant lower costs. Digitial transactions now account for a whopping 85% + of overall transactions

One product that HDFC Bank was able to offer its customers was the 10 second loan product…it could do so because of its vastly superior data analytics and risk management processes.

One surprise for me was Aditya Puri asserting that HDFC Bank is the Indian Alibaba. I had always thought that telcos like Jio or Amazon/Flipkart/PayTm would be India’s answer to Alibaba.

But No, Aditya Puri’s motto is that if a customer wants to shop, pay, invest, trade,borrow, the only option in their mind should be HDFC Bank ! The Bank intends to do that via its Smart Buy Platform which clocked 4,000 Cr in 2018.

The second part of the Book is about the origins of the HDFC Bank. This is mostly material from Tamal’s earlier book ‘HDFC Bank: A Bank for the Buck‘

The third part of the Book is Aditya Puri’s legacy.Aditya Puri is the longest serving MD of a Bank globally (25 years) and will step down in 2020. His legacy is that he created a world class bank with great folks and superb governance standards.

I would recommend this Book to those interested in HDFC Bank and India’s banking industry.