Capital goods

I am in the capital goods industry for the last 10 months.

I am in my last 10 days here and probably in the industry.

I am ashamed to tell you that I don't know what 'capital goods' means.

Not many here know either,yet we are India's largest in the field.

So today I googled it and found a spectrum of definitions that left me all the more indeterminate about the exact meaning of it.

But I know now that Capital goods are not consumer goods.

One website defines capital goods as the 'raw materials used to produce goods'.

Tomato ketchup is a consumer good and is a product of the FMCG ( fast-moving-consumer-goods for those who know the acronym but not the expansion) industry. However, it is used to make burgers and the like to produce 'other goods'.

So would that make it part of capital goods? Is Unilever suddenly a competitor?

Notwithstanding, definitions are very confining as they attempt to provide not just a rigid but even a restrictive structure to the understanding of concepts. Business models need to maintain fluid boundaries, we can't state that we are a capital goods company to the exclusion of producing anything else. Businesses need to keep including and excluding activities and definitions to maintain their main business the main business.

Is the purpose of business to enable shareholders to make money? I find a rather contrarian view more attractive - I believe that that the purpose of business is to invest in the future.

Whether that future is redefined by technology, public policy or convenience, it is withheld in the tomorrow.

So as long as tomorrow exists, there is little reason for the business to go bust.

And if tomorrow exists not, there is little meaning in running the business at all.