The harsh light of reality

In recent weeks, a certain type of investor and investment analyst has drawn attention by being strongly opposed to investing in high-profile loss-making 'start-ups'. This is not about Zomato because that is merely the first case and quite clearly, there will be many, many others. Personally, I'm a full-fledged, card-carrying member of this group of sceptics and I firmly believe that more investors should be. Those with the opposite view feel that now that the long period of seven-eight weeks has gone past since the Zomato IPO, their view stands proven and once can march onwards to other similar IPOs. To understand the underlying point here, let's go back to basics and ask ourselves what the goal of a business is. Note that we are talking about real goals here, not the kind of sweet nothings that