6 Calls We Got Right

1. Too Big to Lead
The media speculation around L&T supremo A.M. Naik’s succession reached a feverish pitch last year. Yet no one had much of a clue on how L&T could possibly find a replacement to lead the engineering and infrastructure behemoth. It’s another matter that by then, the L&T board had figured out a solution. We were the first to tell you about how they decided to deal with the question of complexity. The plan to carve up L&T into separate firms under the leadership of a separate CEO, unlock value by gradually listing each one and also tie the group together through a holding company structure has now been set in motion.




2. US Pullout in Afghanistan
“Many believe the US, before leaving, will strike a deal with the Taliban.… India is expected to continue helping rebuild the country but Pakistan is wary of any kind of Indian influence in its neighbourhood,” we had written. The US began pulling out its troops on July 20. But, its efforts to bring the Taliban into Afghanistan’s mainstream politics have not yet borne fruit. Meanwhile, India has signed a strategic agreement that entails India training and equipping Afghanistan’s security forces.

3. Mamata’s Rule in West Bengal
We had said that the Left is staring at the prospect of vacating Writers’ Building after nearly 35 years, and that Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, along with the Congress, would come to power. As was widely expected, Banerjee pushed out the CPM and its allies. Her industrial and economic policies still remain a mystery though and Mamata now acts more leftist than the Left.

4. The Hottest Startups
Last year, we wrote about Vaatsalya Healthcare. This hospital chain targeted at India’s smaller towns, has opened four new hospitals and taken in $10 million in venture funding. Another startup we wrote about was solar lamp maker D.Light Design. It moved its design setup to Hong Kong and manufacturing to Shenzhen in China to enable its supply chain to scale more easily. Its efforts found success in the S1, which costs just $8 and provides four hours of lighting from a day’s worth of sunlight. Globally, D.Light’s lamps are used by more than 3 million people.

5. Sanjay Jha  — Global Indian to watch for
In a gloomy year for all handset makers except Apple, Jha (then co-CEO of Motorola) managed to pull off the impossible feat of getting Google to buy Motorola for $12.5 billion. To do that, he played good cop-bad cop with Google’s Android ecosystem, threatening to unleash Motorola’s patent arsenal in return for royalties from other vendors. That, of course, would wreck vendors’ trust in Android and Google. So, Google did the only thing it could — it bought Motorola for its patents, not products.

6. Congress Win in Kerala Polls
Last year we wrote that the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) is expected to win the Assembly polls. Even leaders in the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) said they didn’t stand a chance. Although we got this one right, the Kerala polls were a close fight and until the last minute it was unclear who would win. Ultimately the Congress-led UDF pipped the LDF to the post with a margin of just four seats.

Images: 1. A.M Naik: Dinesh Krishnan; 2. B Mathur / Reuters; 3. Rupak De Chowdhuri / Reuters; 5. Robert Galbraith / Reuters