Thursday Post

Some interesting thoughts on this Thursday of May 2018:

1. You all must have heard about the take  over of Flipkart, an Indian company,  by Walmart. Flipkart is an Indian e commerce company founded by  two brothers Sanjay & Binny Bansal, who controlled the company by holding about 12% shares, and the other major holding was with Soft Bank with 22.3% shares. So almost 88% share holding was with outsiders. Walmart is taking over 77% of share holdings. One of the promoter Sachin Bansal has also sold his share holdings for $ 1 Billion( about Rs 6700 Cr), it is said that Walmart in the end will invest about $16 Billion in Flipkart. The employees  of Flipkart also have about 6% share holdings and Walmart is also buying shares held by employees. So it is going to be wind fall for the employees and it has been estimated that more than 30 employees are going to be dollar millionaires.                                                                                               Agreed that Flipkart is India’s number 1  e commerce company, where by going to their site on Internet, you place the order for merchandise and the same is delivered to your home within few days, the payment is either advance(through Credit Cards/Debit Cards/Net Banking etc) or Cash on delivery and in some case replacement and refund is also permitted. Flipkart is the first Indian company who  attracted customers through Inter net, other companies who are in Indian market are Snap Deal, Amazon, Tata Cliq and many more. But the valuation of the company which is $ 21 Billions is mind boggling, as the company do not manufacture any thing, they just market the other companies products through their web site. So now the Indian e commerce market will  have 2 global giants Amazon  and Walmart, who will fight for market share of e commerce business. Market analyst believes that  Walmart may have overpaid but that will depend on how well it can integrate Flipkart’s operations with its global plans and what synergies can be brought about. Considering Amazon  has invested about $ 5 billion in Indian market to build their business and Walmart has paid more than triple that amount for Flipkart.  It is believed that Walmart will quickly go into areas that they understand best and where Flipkart was largely absent and that is grocery business, as grocery contributes to 50% of Walmart’s global sales . So friends, in the near future we all might be buying our grocery from Walmart.
2. Cricket- friends have you ever notice that in One Day Internationals (ODI) and Twenty20 (T20) matches that some times a player who comes to the crease in the last 2 or 3 overs changes the complexion of the games, and the batting team who was on the verge of losing the match, actually won the match in the end. Below I am giving 5 such instances where bowling team did not know what hit them and suddenly from the winning position they went on losing the match:    a)West Indies v/s Pakistan  World Cup 2015-In this case batsman was Andre Russel, he came into bat in the 48th over at the fall of 5th wicket with score at 259/5. Against capable Pakistani attack he belted 4 sixes and 3 hours to score 42  in 13 balls, and took the total to 310/5, Pakistanis were so demoralised after this, and West Indies won the match by 150 runs.                                                                                      b) Pakistan v/s Australia  World Cup 1999–   In this instance batsman was Pakistani wicket keeper Moin Khan, he came into bat at the fall of 6th wicket when the score was 230. His knock of 31 runs in 13 balls with 3 sixes and 2 fours took Pakistan to imposing total of 275.  His innings proved crucial as Pakistan won the game by 10 runs.            c)India v/s Pakistan at Sharjah 1996–     This time it was Indian batsman Azharuddin, he came into bat  when the score was 264/4, and in the next 10 deliveries he faced he smashed 2 fours and 2 sixes to take India to 305 in 50 overs. Eventually this score proved to be beyond Pakistan’s grasp, and India won the match comfortably.              d) West Indies v/s Australia World T20 2014–   When Darren Sammy came   to bat , West Indies were not in great shape and they were needing 50 runs in 21 balls to win the match. In the 19th over he hit Mitchell Starc for 1 six and 2 fours . In the final over West Indies still required 12 runs to win, the first 2 balls did not yield any run, in the next 2 balls bowled by James Faulkner , Sammy hit 2 towering sixes and sealed the match for West Indies.                                                    e)West Indies v/s England World T20 Finals 2016-   In this instance the hero for West Indies was Craig Brathwaite. West Indies were struggling in their chase of England’s 155 runs. Craig came to bat in 16 th over but he could score only 10 runs in 6 balls he faced till the end of 19th over, as other batsman Marlon Samuels seemed unable to connect the ball. When the last over started West Indies still needed 19 runs to win and no punter was willing to give them any chance. Most of the people were expecting that Craig would take one run and give strike to more seasoned batsman   Samuels   but what happened was totally unexpected, Craig hit next 4 balls   from experience bowler Ben Stokes to six in the crowds and hence scored 24 runs, when 19 were needing for victory.                                                                                                Hope you have enjoyed reading this blog.                                                      Please do write your views/comments/ feed backs  in the comments column given at the end of the blog.