Where is the slowdown in India?

With news coming in every day of all major industries in India slowing down from their historic levels of growth in the last few years, everyone in business (including me) is losing our sleep over the state of our businesses and the economy in general. Real-Estate, Cement, Auto, IT, Retail, Travel – all have slowed down in the recent months. No Amount of Liquidity infused by Government/RBI has been able to make banks lend (or) companies to borrow and expand.

With this background, I thought the record monies (spent by owners and sponsors) spent on last year’s IPL will come down to ground-level (what everyone will call sustainable) this year. In fact, I thought the whole sheen associated with IPL (as a matter of fact, I loved the games last year) will be down this year due to the overall slowing economy – people will be worried about their jobs, companies will be worried about liquidity and market rather than to sponsor. All these fears have been put to rest for now (we still don’t know how the public will receive IPL this year) with the all-time high prices paid by team owners for the players in last week’s auction in Goa. See the chart below, US$1.55 Million was paid each by Bangalore and Chennai team owners – wow!