Gautam Chhabria has an interesting comment in reply to Menaka Doshi's post on whether Vendata's acquisition of Cairn India would work given that it does not fit Vendata's "core competence". My answer, what Mr. Agarwal is doing is perfectly right. If he were to have stuck to what consultants and management gurus, currently prescribe, i.e. core competence, then a scrap trader would have remained just at that i.e. scrap trading. He wouldn’t have taken the leap of faith to get into manufacturing cables, to have gotten into making jelly filled telephone cables given the huge demand from erstwhile DOT for laying landlines across the country in the 80’s. He wouldn’t have then leaped into fibre optics after betting that data transmission in the age of internet would explode. ...When the Indian government offered a once in a lifetime opportunity by privatizing national assets like BALCO and Hind Zinc at bargain basement prices, sticking to core competencies would have mea...