Monday, December 30, 2013

'Indian Stocks' - desi eshtyle, dose of news.. something which does not easily go out of fashion

Well.. most of Warren Buffett fans would know his love for media stocks (newspaper specifically) and how he has moved away from them over time. His shareholder letters are a wonderful source of 'gyan'..

Been in India for a vacation.. first thing which catches my eye is the newspaper.... I have 'read' the news, I know what to expect from online sources... but still... I LOVE to hold that paper in hand to get latest on the local stuff... happenings in politics... gossip.. some discussions on what are the current hot handles...

What a wonderful business to be in - 'local news'... better still in your own mother tongue. Hindi.. Kannada.. Tamil.. Telugu... Marathi.. Gujarati.. Bengali... Malayalam... whatever other languages which are 'not easily available on the net'.

Well... I'm now classifying all the regional newspapers listed on the market. There seem to be host of the small players. I have not spent time riding on one or two stocks in this space. Starting tops down - I am listing the top 1 -2 in each languages and trying to download their annual reports..

For starters - Hindi, Malayalam and Telugu have struck my mind. One tip: In Hindi - I like 'Hindustan Media Ventures'. Strong balance sheet and lot of cash (too much cash can be bad in wrong hands.. however I think coming from the HT stable, could be a good buy in mid term). I am still trying to see other language papers currently...



Ciao till next time...Harsha