Supply of losers…….a
business
Yep, it is!
In one of the social gathering I could know Hemant much better though I knew
him since long. He was sharing his diverse interest like collection of
antiques, spotting rare paintings, horse racing etc, mind it these are other than
his regular business interest. He told me about his collection of rare stamps
and coins. When I was talking to him then he just purchased a bronze ensemble
of gods in Udaipur for something like 17,000 bucks. He explained that he just
chanced upon this antique piece and predicted that the market value will
increase over the time. So it was one more collection or shall we say one more
asset added among many in his collection.
I was more
interested about his horse racing endeavor which he pursued a few years back. He
told me he used to own 3 horses in Calcutta race course.
How much did
you pay for those?
I paid
something like 1 and half lacs for each.
I was pretty
surprised by the cost, it appeared to be a paltry sum, I had imagined the cost
would be 30/40 lacs or more for each.
Further I asked.
Where did
you stable your horses?
I was keeping
those in the stable of Calcutta Race Course for a monthly charge of 11,000
rupees per month per horse.
I told him, “
At 1 lac or so you certainly did not purchase a thorough bred winning horse.
Then how did you cover your cost?”
Who said
about winning? Look every time a race is on they require many horses to run so
that it appears it was a well fought race. As you know the betting crowd wants
thrill of the race and my horses provide that by getting defeated. After all
winning horses have to defeat some. I used to supply those losing horses. I
would bargain with the owners of winning horses in advance and recover my cost
of maintenance of horses plus my profit.
It makes
business sense.
No wonder in
golf tournaments golfers like us we who don’t win but play for the fun but are
given a bagful of goodies to encourage us to take part in the competition. We are
those losing horses.
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