TMS Ep64: Investment advisors, Puneet Nanda, US Fed, RT-PCR & RAT

India has just about 1,324 registered investment advisors for an investor base of over five crore. Their numbers have remained stagnant, even as the need for transparent investment advisory is rising with the rapid increase in financially-savvy Indians. What is the reason for this? Is it SEBI’s rules or investors’ reluctance to pay for advice or something else? 

The dearth of advisors, however, is not denting the investors’ confidence in the market, which is offering growth opportunity to all -- whether they are the behemoths or the startups. One of them, ICICI Venture, is also on a pursuit to position itself as a private equity major in the startup, fintech and real estate space. Starting from scratch, it aims to come to market by mid-2022. In a recent conversation, Business Standard’s Surajeet Das Gupta takes a peek into chief executive Puneet Nanda’s private equity playbook for ICICI Venture. 

After the Indian markets, let us see what is keeping the US investors hooked. The US central bank is coping with inflation that’s already running at more than twice its formal 2% target. The inflation’s so persistent that policymakers have discarded their description of it as ‘transitory’. Besides, a low unemployment rate and rising wages may signal that full employment is near. Given this, will the US Fed become the first major global central bank to hasten tapering of its asset purchase programme? Or will the emergence of the new coronavirus variant upend policy makers’ plans?

Amid the uncertainty about the US Fed's pace of tapering, let us see how our government is preparing to deal with the new variant of Covid-19. It has ramped up testing of foreigners coming from countries considered ‘at risk’. The new guidelines mandate them to have a negative RT-PCR test report before entering the country. Find out what are the most common types of tests which help us detect the virus in this podcast.

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