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Reads: Twisting Ireland's Arm, Alarming Startup Cash Burns, Axing IIPM….

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Monday reads:

IIPM can’t call itself a management institute, says Delhi High Court. The organization – it’s hardly an institute – has been making fools out of students for many years, putting full page ads and talking about MBAs from unknown sources in Belgium and so on. I used to spend a lot of time trying to debunk their claims a long time back, when they threatened bloggers and put silly cases in strange places on anyone who wrote honestly about them. Well, it’s payback time, and it’s going to get a lot worse.

Exotel, a startup, blames another startup for spreading rumours they’re shutting down. The founder of Exotel, which provides voice telephony solutions to customers, has sent a mail to its customers saying they’re not shutting down, and has posted emails by its competitor which it says spread the rumour that Exotel is on the verge of going belly up.

The ECB threatened to make Ireland Bankrupt if Bondholders were forced to take a hit, says the Ireland Independent. Forcing a hit would have hurt banks in other countries (who have to take a loss and because they are highly leveraged, even a tiny loss can make them bankrupt). But that’s no reason for Ireland to treat them with any more fairness than it would treat anyone else. However, this sounds like an excuse; all they had to do is "reveal" that they were being bullied, at that time – public opinion would have ensured they didn’t take what they didn’t really want.

Jayalalitha Goes to Jail for disproportionate wealth compared to her known sources of income between 1991 and 1996. She has to pay a fine of Rs. 100 cr. which is nothing, really. What the four year sentence does is to make "Amma" ineligible for contesting elections for another 10 years.

Fred Wilson says Cash Burn at startups is a serious concern, with startups raising more and more money and throwing it down to losing propositions (hence the "burn") which will eventually (Note: the rest of this sentence is ME) and hopefully make them profitable by a combination of beating less funded competitors, building a critical mass of market share and magic.

With increasing fund raises by Indian startups and the fact that most are simply nowhere close to profitability, with the excuses being the same (we could be profitable if we really wanted types), the Indian startup sector too is in a similar situation. This can last as long as there is cheap money in the world, so I’m not holding my breath. And yes, I’d buy if Flipkart listed, who wants to miss a mad momentum play.

And read Marc Andreessen’s Tweetstorm I would simply call: "Worry".

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