Side Notes by Zerodha Varsity

Seven women from a housing society in South Mumbai started Lijjat Papad in 1959. It started as a co-operative and has since onboarded more than 45,000 member sisters. Interestingly, Lijjat also runs the Sasa brand of detergents and soaps.

Lijjat Papad is a masterclass in sustainably managing a large-scale organization that has remained true to its core values, even decades after its establishment.

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Disclaimer: The stocks or financial instruments discussed in this podcast are meant for educational purposes only. Please do not consider them recommendations or financial advice of any form.

Nick Leeson was a young trader at Barings Bank who was tasked with setting up a trading desk in Singapore. He was an aggressive risk-taker who told small, harmless lies that soon became big enough to bankrupt the bank. He exhibited several behavioral biases that also led him to run a full-fledged scam. When in prison, he wrote a book called Rogue Trader, detailing how he orchestrated the whole scam at Barings.

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Disclaimer: The stocks or financial instruments discussed in this podcast are meant for educational purposes only. Please do not consider them recommendations or financial advice of any form.

A company usually creates reserves from share premiums and retained earnings. However, not all reserves are liquid. Companies use reserves for various purposes. If not used well, excessive reserves held in cash could be a drag on the company's ROE. 

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Disclaimer: The stocks or financial instruments discussed in this podcast are meant for educational purposes only. Please do not consider them recommendations or financial advice of any form.

Ryanair offers extremely cheap flight tickets in Europe. They sell most tickets for £15 or less, which is roughly ₹1600. You hardly ever find those fares, even in India. Indigo is said to have emulated Ryanair's business model in its early days, but not anymore. So, how does Ryanair make money? What is its business model? 

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Disclaimer: The stocks or financial instruments discussed in this podcast are meant for educational purposes only. Please do not consider them recommendations or financial advice of any form.

Crazy Eddie was an electronics retailer in New York in the 1970s and 1980s. It was very famous for its catchy TV commercials but soon became infamous for the scams by its founders. This is a crazy tale of how two cousins defrauded their customers, shareholders, insurers, and the government.

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Disclaimer: The stocks or financial instruments discussed in this podcast are meant for educational purposes only. Please do not consider them recommendations or financial advice of any form.

Jio Financial Services was spun off from Reliance Industries. Reliance is a part of the Nifty 50 index. Does that make JFS a de facto member of the index? JFS became part of the index for 13 days. What was the reason? Was 13 days too much or too little?

You could use the same framework to understand ITC Hotels' inclusion and exclusion in the indices.

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Disclaimer: The stocks or financial instruments discussed in this podcast are meant for educational purposes only. Please do not consider them recommendations or financial advice of any form.

Warren Buffett called airlines a cursed sector. Kingfisher, Jet Airways, and Go Air in India, and many other airlines worldwide, have gone out of business. Even Indigo, India's most successful airline so far, suffered losses in four out of the last eight years. Why are airlines such a complicated business? 

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Disclaimer: The stocks or financial instruments discussed in this podcast are meant for educational purposes only. Please do not consider them recommendations or financial advice of any form.

A Kolkata-based group of brokers, often called the bear cartel, was shorting Reliance stock. As the stock was getting hammered, Mr. Dhirubhai Ambani apparently sought help from a group of NRIs to steady the stock price. The tale is dramatic and typical of the time when it happened.

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Disclaimer: The stocks or financial instruments discussed in this podcast are meant for educational purposes only. Please do not consider them recommendations or financial advice of any form.

Hong Kong's central bank does not print its currency. Instead, three private banks are entrusted to print Hong Kong Dollars. This arrangement is as good as handing over the monetary policy to private players. It seems strange, but there is a British-era reason behind it. And guess what? Currency pegging has also worked well in this arrangement!

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Disclaimer: The stocks or financial instruments discussed in this podcast are meant for educational purposes only. Please do not consider them recommendations or financial advice of any form.

The Harshad Mehta scam of 1992 exposed massive loopholes in India’s banking and stock market systems, leading to a series of crucial financial reforms. Faster adoption of digital banking and dematerialized shares, stricter regulatory oversight, and modernized stock exchanges were all outcomes of the reforms meant to prevent such frauds in the future.

Zerodha Varsity on Social Media:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zerodhavarsity/

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Disclaimer: The stocks or financial instruments discussed in this podcast are meant for educational purposes only. Please do not consider them recommendations or financial advice of any form.