New Delhi, July 21 -- Recent news that an Indian pharmaceutical company was paid a large sum of money for their research on a new cancer drug made Bertie quite happy. From the looks of it, this could be the first multi-billion novel drug to hit the global market whose foundational research was done by an Indian company. Bertie's exultation was partly from a sense of patriotism but also from having closely seen the founder's sheer tenacity in continuing the expensive research, despite the counsel of every 'market-type' to shelve it, Bertie included.

It was with this sense of enthusiasm that Bertie attended the company's analyst meet. Now that he occupied the higher echelons of fund management hierarchy, attending analyst meets was below h...