Lessons from the Madras Club – Lesson 5: Residential property selection is counterintuitive

Lessons from the Madras Club – Lesson 5: Residential property selection is counterintuitive
The 19-floor aptly named H2O Holy Faith complex of 90 flats being demolished in January 2020 in Kochi, Kerala.

I sat in a friend’s apartment discussing the logistics of apartment hunting, and a number of bizarre differences in the selection process came to light. In the West, usually the higher up in the building the apartment is, the more desirable and likely more expensive it is. These higher apartments usually offer a better view and hence more prestige. In Chennai, she told me, the ground floor is the more desirable and expensive. The reasoning? Firstly, it is very hot in Chennai for most of the year, so it is cooler towards the bottom of the building. Next, because things have a way of breaking down regularly, one can’t rely on the elevators to always be working, so being towards the bottom of the building means you are not faced with an arduous climb when that inevitably happens.

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Lessons from the Madras Club – Lesson 2: India and X-efficiency

Lessons from the Madras Club – Lesson 2: India and X-efficiency
India and X-efficency

In the late 1990s I studied at University in Japan when the world was fascinated by Toyota’s low car defect rates compared to every other brand on the market. It was driving the proud American, car hungry consumer insane! Their efficiency and reliability was so inexplicable, intoxicating, and seemingly unobtainably magical, they termed it ‘X-Efficiency’ and people came from the world over to study this new manufacturing witchcraft. What does this have to do with India?

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