Ambika Iyer

How This Started

By training and profession, I am a software engineer. For most of my early career, money was something I earned and thought about only loosely. I was never a big spender, which was a good habit without me consciously knowing it. But I also had no framework for making money work. My savings sat in a savings account earning around 3% a year, and I had never thought to question whether that was enough. I did not know what inflation meant in any practical sense.

In 2016, I was laid off. The context matters: I had just taken on a large home loan. So the combination of a new EMI commitment and a sudden loss of income forced me to actually sit down and look at my finances properly for the first time.

I want to be clear that this was a relatively gentle layoff compared to what many people experience. I was put on a notice period of three months rather than being asked to leave immediately. I found a new job within that period and was never technically unemployed. But those three months were the first time in my working life that I had real mental space outside of work demands, and I used most of it trying to understand money.

That is when I looked properly at what I had. Decent savings, all sitting in a bank account at 3% interest. A home loan. No understanding of inflation, no idea that the money sitting idle was losing real purchasing power every year. The question that kept nagging at me was simple: what do I do with what I have so that the loan does not become a crisis if things go wrong again?

The Learning Journey

I started the way most cautious people start: bank fixed deposits. They felt safe, I could understand them, and they at least earned more than a savings account. But I quickly started wondering whether there was more. I graduated to mutual funds, which introduced me to the concept of equity and the stock market in a managed, lower-risk way.

Eventually I opened a demat account and started buying individual stocks. I had no idea what I was doing. I bought when stocks were running up because that is what every article I read seemed to be saying. I sold when they dropped because panic is a powerful teacher when real money is on the line. I made the standard beginner mistakes.

The shift came from YouTube. I stumbled onto Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, their Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting talks, Munger's Daily Journal meeting conversations, and the hundreds of videos explaining their philosophy. I spent an enormous amount of time watching people break down how Buffett thinks about businesses. Alongside that I started using tools like Screener.in and TradingView to actually look at company financials and charts, learning both fundamental and technical analysis through a combination of videos and hands-on exploration.

The conceptual shift was significant. Instead of asking "is this stock going up?" I started asking "is this a good business? Does it have a durable competitive advantage? Is it being run well? Am I paying a reasonable price?" These were completely different questions, and they changed how I looked at everything.

I want to be honest: I am still a student. I learn something new every day. I do not read annual reports cover to cover — I use screener.in to navigate the key numbers, TradingView for charts and technicals, and a lot of YouTube content from people who explain financial concepts clearly. I have gone from bank deposits to mutual funds to picking individual stocks in both Indian and US markets, and every step of that journey involved getting things wrong first.

Why This Website Exists

This website is my notes made public.

When I was learning, I kept wishing someone had written a beginner-friendly breakdown of HDFC Bank's business model, or a plain-English explanation of what a P/E ratio actually means in practice, or an honest analysis of NVIDIA that covered both why it was extraordinary and what could go wrong. What I found online was either too shallow to be useful or too technical to be accessible.

So I started writing what I was learning the way I wished it had been explained to me. No jargon without an explanation. No price targets or stock tips. No cheerleading. Just honest, thorough analysis of businesses for someone who is earlier in the learning journey than I am now.

The aim is that if you are where I was in 2016, this site helps you not be caught off guard. Financial literacy is not complicated once someone takes the time to explain it properly. It should not take a layoff to force the conversation.

What This Site Is and Is Not

Everything on this site is published for educational and information-sharing purposes only. None of it is financial advice. None of it is a recommendation to buy or sell any security.

I am not a registered financial advisor, a SEBI-registered research analyst, or an investment professional of any kind. I am a software engineer who became deeply curious about how businesses and markets work, and who shares what she learns. I am still learning and will make mistakes, as any honest person in this space will tell you they do too.

The goal of every article is to give you better tools to think about a company or concept for yourself, not to tell you what to do with your money. If something here helps you ask better questions or understand a business more clearly, it has done its job.

Please do your own research, consult a qualified financial advisor for decisions that matter, and never invest money you cannot afford to lose.