ML: What is your sense of the economic situation?
Puri: I think people are overreacting on the economic slowdown in India, especially media and industry. I have just spent the morning convincing a foreign banker that things are different in India and the fears of foreigners are exaggerated. India is basically a story of domestic demand. The only local issue, if at all, that we have is...

India currently consumes 8.50 million tonnes of paper; this is expected to go up to 10 million tonnes by 2010 and 15 million tonnes by 2015, a growth driven by increased spending on education, higher literacy levels, improved standards of living, an expanding retail sector and increase in packaging and advertise-ment expenditure. Paper manufacturing is, however, a very capital-intensive...

There are five major factors which affect stock prices or the price of anything that is determined by free-market forces. These are: economic, monetary, fundamental, technical and psychological. There is lots of research (and books) available on the first four factors but the most important and, I would say, the deciding factor is the fifth one, viz., the psychological factor. Relatively...