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Hi, I am Sakib and I have been working as an equity analyst for more than four years in the frontier market. In the process, being a generalist, I have grown passion and curiosity for understanding different types of businesses. Going through the businesses' origin stories, learning about the business models and deciphering the economics behind each business are the things that I do most of my time. In this blog I challenge myself to look at global businesses that give us lenses to understand the world we live in.

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How Food Delivery Apps Make Money

Third party food delivery is proving to be a tough business space with minimum option to differentiate, tight profitability margin and intense competition that is putting the industry in the process of more and more consolidation. When Uber started and turned into something that people would use everyday, it became obvious that the idea of moving people from Point A to Point B with the help of an app would branch into Uber for other services like food delivery, groceries or any other parcel. The world of convenience economy was only about to expand. Like Uber, an app would connect merchants to consumers via riders. The app is a platform that help connect these three parties that are required to make a transaction and shipment. The space that was ripe for disruption in this convenience economy was restaurants. Most restaurants didn't have their own delivery logistics. There were only few exception that you can think of that had their own delivery logistics. They had so because they

What to Look for in a Cash Flow Statement

Cash flow statement demonstrates the flow of cash coming into a business and going out from a business. It differs from income statement because cash flow statement is recorded on a purely cash basis. In income statement, if a business booked a sale of a product or a service and was yet to receive cash from the customer, the business would record it as sale in its income statement. On the other hand, if the business purchased raw materials for the products they sold or incurred cost for the service they provided, they would record this expense as cost of sales or cost of service regardless of whether the transaction was on a credit basis or cash basis. This method of accounting is called accrual accounting which is the most used method of accounting for income statement. So, cash flow statement gives you a different perspective. Since, it records how much cash is coming into a business and going out from the business through operating activities, investing activities and financing acti

History of Money and Monetary Systems

From ancient Rome to modern world, money has gone through an evolutionary process. For the Roman empire, scarcity of silver and gold meant resorting to debasement to create new money. For the Inca empire, the same silver and gold was sacred precious metals coming from the hand of God. Spanish empire hunted for these precious metals to accumulate power but in truth abundance of silver lowered the value of the metals for which they had unquenchable lust. But over the course of time, the concept of money turned out to be a simple narrative installed in the minds of the people. The truth of the matter is, be it gold or silver or simply a piece of paper or the digits in your mobile wallet, the money has the value only if other people value it the same way. It's a machine driven by trust. The narrative of money has made a significant contribution to the progress of humankind. Although It was often flawed and we are yet to find a perfect system, the concept of money was one of the greates

How Pinduoduo Made it Big | History of Pinduoduo

Alibaba (Taobao and Tmall) and JD was dominating the China e-commerce space and no other company was able to match their scale until a new company emerged with an aim to serve the tier 3 and 4 cities that remained underserved. It focused on perishable products and daily necessities to make sure the users have high purchase frequency and it was also their category of choice because of low competition. It growthhacked its way by offering group buying feature at too good to believe discounts. It took it to the next level by focusing on interactivity by making the app browsable for fun and rewards. The company’s IPO prospectus referred to the platform as mix of Costco and Disneyland, the pricing is the Costco part and the fun browsing is the Disney part. Pinduoduo built a recipe for building a social commerce platform that mimicked the way people shop offline. It took cues from the gaming world to entice users to spend time on the app. All these viral elements made Pinduoduo the largest e

Bangladesh Economy: Understanding the Relationship among Key Macro Variables

Arrival of the pandemic and the following monetary stance have shifted some key macro variables to the extreme. One of the major windfalls of the pandemic for Bangladesh economy is remittance. Restriction of cross border movement shut the illegal remittance market (e.g. hundi). As a result, remittance in the book grew significantly posting 50-60% YoY (Year over Year) growth for the last few months. Some other factors may have played some role too in this regard, but this one is thought to be the most significant one. With the falling import and moderate export growth, remittance turned out to be a significant driver towards the swelling BoP surplus. This gives the central bank, Bangladesh Bank, a lot of flexibility in conducting expansionary monetary stance to support the economy in its critical time. We are observing a time when there is ample liquidity in the financial system, BoP surplus growing, interest rate falling and inflation remaining at comfortable range. I wil

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